What was going on when I was born?

KINSHASA, Zaire, May 4 Seven women and two children were trampled to death and 72 other people were injured today as crowds pressed forward to get into a mass celebrated by Pope John Paul II, hospital officials said.

OAKLAND, CALIF. THE players watched him carefully at first, the way people keep both eyes on a desperado who settles in a frontier town.

The Convenience and Safety Corporation announced yesterday that it was withdrawing its bid to build 4,100 bus shelters in New York City and said it was "leaning towards" not bidding on any future contracts to build such shelters in the city.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 30 When the British Columbia Resources Investment Corporation makes a corporate move, virtually this entire province listens. With two million residents of the province as shareholders, the interest in company developments is not surprising.

ELLENVILLE, N.Y. May 4 It could have been the set for an Alfred Hitchcock movie about a swarm of giant butterflies about to descend on an unsuspecting resort town.

WASHINGTON, May 4 The United States has decided to close its immigration, visa and refugee office in Havana because the Cuban Government has failed to guarantee the safety of those who enter the building, the State Department said today.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., May 4 Bijan Pakzad is a maverick. At a time when an estimated 35 percent of the $7 billion men's wear industry faces a very difficult year, as the economy weakens and many men's stores may close their doors, Mr. Pakzad has ...

The debt-plagued Jamaican Government, which has been searching for money to pay for vital imports, has still been unable to secure new loans to avoid the prospect of default on its foreign debt within the next few months, sources in Jamaica have confirmed.

With a small band and a large turnout, Democrats in the New York State Senate threw a fund-raising party yesterday in hopes of turning their minority into a majority for the first time in 16 years.

INGLEWOOD, Calif., May 4 The Los Angeles Lakers denied the Philadelphia 76ers the three elements today that had put them into the National Basketball Association championship round: the strength of their rebounding, their defensive effectiveness and the talents of Julius Erving.

There were fire-eaters and prancing mimes, wailing jazz musicians and spinning roller-disco dancers. There were sunbathers, sketchers, body painters, poets, marijuana smokers and circuses of gurus and amateur acrobats. But the big show in Washington Square Park yesterday was the disappearance of the massive Washington Memorial Arch.