What the hell happened last night on SHA-256, with the outrageously high price paid for hash?
And can we do it again?

Ppl were buying a lot of power to mine the new coin- ie: PayCoin (XPY). At one point nearly 10 % of all BTC mining power switched over to mine it. PayCoin set a new record

The block chain was overwhelmed by the unexpected mining demand and stalled at block 277. This is being fixed as we speak. The 3 pools will be back up tomorrow sometime.
You can get updates here:
https://hashtalk.org/category/3/announcementshttps://hashtalk.org/category/26/paycoin-and-paybase