What was going on when I was born?

TOKYO, Jan. 11 The Honda Motor Company announced today that it would build Japan's first passenger-car assembly plant in the United States near Columbus, Ohio, where Honda last year started making motorcycles.

UNITED NATIONS, N.Y., Jan. 11 A Security Council vote on an American plan to cut off sales to Iran was unexpectedly delayed for 24 hours tonight after Teheran conveyed to Secretary General Kurt Waldheim a new proposal, presumably providing for the release of the American hostages. United States officials promptly described the offer as being of "doubtful dependability."

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11--Continuing to confound the predictions of some economic forecasters, the nation's job market remained relatively strong and stable last month, with the unemployment rate almost unchanged and employment showing a healthy increase, the Labor Department reported today.

Prime Minister Joe Clark of Canada said yesterday that his Government "questions the appropriateness" of holding the Olympic Games in the Soviet Union and would take the lead in attempting to have them moved to another country.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance said today that the United States was not planning any further punitive actions against the Soviet Union at this time, beyond the list of political and economic steps already announced.

PUL-I-CHARKHI, Afghanistan, Jan. 11 (AP) More than 800 Afghans, some hysterical over the Government's refusal to release all their relatives held as political prisoners, stormed a prison and tore down the doors to two cellblocks today. One Afghan soldier and one civilian were killed in the riot.

NORFOLK, Va., Jan. 11 Bo Rein, recently hired head football coach of Louisiana State University, and the pilot of a private plane were missing and presumed dead today after their craft apparently flew on automatic pilot 1,000 miles in the wrong direction and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

Labor has lost an acclaimed man with the death of George Meany, for half a century a strong leader and a symbol of the kind of labor leaders who have often come to the forefront in America.

SAN REMO, Italy The Italian police raided a clandestine heroin laboratory here, near the French border, on Nov. 27 and seized 22 kilograms of morphine base about to be processed into heroin. They were startled to find that the man operating the laboratory was Antoine Restori, a chemist who was a major figure in processing heroin for the American market during the heyday of the so-called French connection.

MOSCOW, Jan. 11 Two poets have resigned from the official Union of Soviet Writers in protest against the expulsion of two colleagues in the year-old censorship controversy over an unofficial publication called Metropol.

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Jan. 11 The robbery, assault and humiliation of a 77-year-old Cardinal here has galvanized church concern over growing violence in the world's largest Roman Catholic country.