What was going on when I was born?

KINGSTON IN THE world according to Roland Machold, birthdays are to celebrace life. In keeping with this philosophy, Mr. Machold decided to give his wife, Pamela, a 40th birthday present that she would never forget: A 10-mile race for women appropriately titled "Pamela's Party."

HARTFORD IF you recoil at the clutter in your basement, consider Dorothy McCoughtry's.

TEHERAN, Iran, April 26--The American hostages have been removed from the United States Embassy in Teheran and will be scattered to cities and towns throughout Iran to thwart any further rescue attempts, the militants holding the embassy said today.

Until recently, only one group outdid corporate executives in hostility to the idea of unionists serving on company boards. That group was union executives, fearful that any crossover into the policy-making ranks would impair their adversary role as representatives of the workers in collective bargaining and employee grievances.

AS the jet lifted from the Cam Ranh Bay airfield and headed for the United States, Sgt. Joe Giacalone took his last look at Vietnam. He was happy that he was coming home and thought himself a lucky man.

PAT RILEY, the Los Angeles Lakers assistant coach, was thinking back to last Feb. 8, when the Lakers were playing the New Jersey Nets in Piscataway, N.J. Even on that late date in the National Basketball Association season,

ALTHOUGH it is nearly impossible to find consolation in military failure, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown had little difficulty in explaining the advantages that the Carter Administration had seen in the proposed mission to rescue the American hostages in Teheran.

RIVERHEAD THE escape of three inmates from the Suffolk County Correctional Facility here has spurted criticism of the state prison system by corrections officials in both counties. They said that the inability of state institutions to accept on schedule offenders due to be transferred from local jails had put an extra burden on the county facilities.

A group of terrorists recently made a tour of the restaurants and cafes in a downtown district of Ankara, warning clients that there would be a raid shortly "and to please keep away."

FOUR years ago, when the Y.W.C.A. asked decorators to provide a showcase house for a spring fund-raising event, the mood they provided was fantasy, with rich, perishable silks, eclectic clutters of accessories, bare windows and specialized spaces like a lady's sitting room for idle hours.

In 1962 the producer Alexander H. Cohen rented a blocklong billboard on Broadway and emblazoned it with a message, "Barnum: the World's Fair Musical." "Barnum," as Mr. Cohen envisioned it, would not only be a musical biography of P.T. Barnum, but would also be a ...

WASHINGTON AFTER a lingering and labori ous look at President Carter's efforts to achieve a balanced budget for the 1981 fiscal year, the New Jersey State Office here is calling for the restoration of about $4 billion cut by Mr. Carter.