Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Orissa (Alteration of Name) Bill and the Constitution (113th Amendment) Bill were passed to bring the English and Hindi spellings into conformity with the Odia script transliteration. The Lok Sabha passed the bills on the 9th of November 2010 and the Rajya Sabha on the 24th of March 2011, officially changing both the state name to Odisha and the language name from Oriya to Odia.
The Kalinga War was fought in 261 BCE when Mauryan Emperor Ashoka invaded the ancient kingdom of Kalinga, which coincides with the borders of modern Odisha. Ashoka's own edicts record approximately 100,000 people killed and 150,000 captured. The scale of the suffering is said to have transformed Ashoka into a pacifist who converted to Buddhism.
Odisha's most celebrated temples are the Shri Jagannath Temple in Puri, the Lingaraj Temple in Bhubaneswar, and the Konark Sun Temple. The Jagannath Temple stands about 200 feet high. Anantavarman Chodaganga began reconstruction of the Jagannath Temple around 1135, and Narasimhadeva I constructed the Konark temple around 1250.
Odissi is a classical Indian dance form from Odisha with an unbroken tradition of 2,000 years, making it the oldest surviving classical dance form in India based on archaeological evidence. It is mentioned in the Natyashastra of Bharatamuni, possibly written around 200 BCE, and is defined by the tribhangi posture, which divides the body into three bends at the head, torso, and hips.
Odisha holds a fifth of India's coal reserves, a quarter of its iron ore, a third of its bauxite, and most of its chromite. The state also has a 485-kilometre coastline along the Bay of Bengal and covers an area of 155,707 square kilometres, making it the eighth-largest state in India by area.
Gahirmatha Beach, located within the Bhitarkanika National Park in Kendrapara district, Odisha, is the world's largest nesting site for olive ridley sea turtles. The Indian Coast Guard launched Operation Oliver in 2013 to protect the endangered sea turtle population of the region.