A dead man being elected to the Senate was one of the least extra-ordinary developments on a night when the closest presidential election in four decades degenerated into sheer confusion.
A telephone concession of defeat by Vice-President Al Gore to his Republican rival George W. Bush was followed an hour later by a retraction: 'Circumstances have changed since I first called you . . . I need to withdraw my concession . . . '
Then, an exhausted Mr Gore went to bed after staying up for 54 hours straight, while his rival pondered the news beside the fire at the Governor's Mansion in Austin, Texas.
At 3.30 am, more than 24 hours after voting began in a tiny New England hamlet, the race was once again too close to call. Mr Bush's 'victory' - already announced by all major US television networks on the basis of projected exit polls - suddenly hung on several hundred votes in Florida.
The south-eastern state - rocked by changing population demographics in recent years - held the key to both men winning the necessary 270 electoral college votes to take power.
As the final counting continued in the early hours, signs were that Mr Gore might win the popular vote. If Mr Bush goes on to win in the 538-member electoral college, a Gore win in the popular vote will further erode an already troubled mandate. Not since 1888 has the winner of a plurality of votes garnered too few electoral college delegates to be proclaimed president.
In terms of the unusual it is hard to know where to start. Suddenly the only sense spoken through the night in a flood of heated punditry seemed to be from the colleague who quoted semi-literate baseball legend Yogi Berra and his hoariest of truisms: 'It ain't over, 'till it's over.'