What was going on when I was born?

Turnover on the New York Stock Exchange, swelled by increased institutional and professional buying, soared to 67.7 million shares yesterday, the second highest on record. Tuesday's volume was 52.3 million shares.

WORLD auction records in dozens of antiques and decorative arts categories were toppled with astounding frequency in 1979. Indeed, the end of the year and the decade brought the first prices of more than $1 million for French 18th-century furniture and antiquities. Even more impressive to some was the performance of such lesser wares as toys, typewriters and thimbles most of which were purchased not by museums, but by collectors or dealers.

The Roscoe Diner always does a fairly brisk business. On busy days, this sprawling restaurant in upstate New York, 130 miles northwest of Manhattan, serves a few thousand meals. On any day, it dishes out several hundred.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 The Immigration and Naturalization Service, riven by political interference and engulfed in malpractice, has stumbled to virtual bureaucratic collapse, according to Government officials, Congressional sources and a wide range of private experts.

LONDON, Jan. 16 British police sources say they have linked Samuel Cummings, one of the world's largest private arms dealers, with two Americans who were arrested last month in New York City, where they were described as major international gunrunners.

Mayor Koch, in a proposal to balance the next two city budgets, called yesterday for deep cuts in nearly all city services except the police force and for a total of $192 million in tax increases.

The city's Department of Finance seems to believe that the addresses of the New York Telephone Company and Consolidated Edison are both unknown. But that ignorance is bliss, where the state is concerned.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 The United States, seeking to ease India's apprehension over newly promised military aid to Pakistan, told the Government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi today that it wanted to improve the security of both India and Pakistan after the Soviet Union's military intervention in Afghanistan.

Gold bullion prices again soared to record levels on both sides of the Atlantic yesterday. But the fact that New York gold prices did not match the stunning earlier rise in London signaled strongly that a reaction was imminent in both markets today, traders said.

IN December 1974, he felt miserable and had $242.22 in his checking account. But Mario Locicero, a designer, went out to a plant store and bought four of the tallest Douglas firs that would fit in his apartment.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 (AP) Production at the nation's factories rose a weak three-tenths of 1 percent last year, the most sluggish performance since the recession in 1974, the Government reported today.