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

Don't spread this nonsense here please, this is not hashtalk. 10% would be 30 PH/s, it was nowhere near that. 2-3% at most. Not that it's at all relevant to NiceHash users.