The Ford employee who could have invented the phrase OK

There have been many attempts to explain how the phrase ‘OK’ entered our everyday vocabulary.

One of the more outlandish revolves around an Irishman who, so the story goes, went to work at the Ford plant in Michigan more than a century ago.

His name was Owen Kelly and, according to folklore, he emigrated to the US from Ireland as a young man and got a job on Henry Ford’s assembly line at a time when the company was gearing up for the launch of the Model T.