What was going on when I was born?

First-quarter earnings reports of the nation's major retailers are due out starting today, and some of the largest companies are expected to report the sharpest profit declines.

ATLANTA, May 18--Demonstrating that he has lost little of his prowess despite a long absence, Pat Zachry pitched nobly today as the Mets split a doubleheader with the Atlanta Braves.

Iranian assets held by the Federal Reserve have earned more than $80 million since President Carter imposed a freeze last November, according to Federal Reserve officials.

A team of specialists climbed scaffolding on the Statue of Liberty over the weekend to look for damage by two political protesters who had scaled the monument a week earlier. Instead, they found blemishes from acid rain and other corrosion from 40 years of exposure since the statue was last overhauled.

MIAMI, May 18--Five more persons were killed today in racial rioting here that continued into a second night. Police and National Guard patrols tried in vain to enforce a dusk-to-dawn curfew to stop the violence, which by tonight had claimed 14 lives and left more than 200 injured.

CHICAGO, May 18--The Commonwealth Edison Company, like many other utilities, faces a difficult future, with rising oil prices and production costs, large capital demands aggravated by an unstable bond market and the onset of recession.

ON a rainy Friday afternoon in Sec Taylor Stadium, a cheerful little ball park on the banks where the Raccoon River meets the Des Moines, where baseball players are not as self-assured as the ones in the big leagues, and where fewer people--and television cameras-- watch them play, the pitchers for the Evansville Triplets, the top farm club of the Detroit Tigers, went through the monotony of their pregame running.

DALLAS, May 18--An impressive lineup of recent box-office hit films will be made available to the public through a new pay-television network being organized by four major Hollywood film makers and the Getty Oil Company.

MIAMI, May 18-- Black leaders here said today that they could see violence coming for months.

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y., May 18-- Leonard Whitenight didn't plant flowers in his garden in the Love Canal neighborhood this year, and he no longer mows the lawn. "I'm sick of this canal, this city and this state," he said today. "I just want to get away."

RIDGEWOOD, N.J.--"Sure, I've cut back," said Robert W. Honsinger, principal of the Ridgewood High School. "I don't use my Visa card anymore."

LOS ANGELES, May 18--The cost of financing pensions for retired and disabled employees is growing so fast for many American cities that some have been forced to curtail public services just to pay for pensions.