What was going on when I was born?

CHICAGO AS designers, architects and office furni ture buyers roamed the halls of this city's mammoth Merchandise Mart last week, they sat on swiveling secre tarial chairs, opened stationery drawers, stretched out on airport seating and ran their fingers along credenza and storage unit edges.

"I JOINED the Mothers' Center of Queens before my child was born," said Stephanie Sporn. "I had worked for seven years, and now I was going to be at home with a baby. I wanted to know other mothers. I wanted a place to talk about the feelings I was experiencing."

WASHINGTON, June 18 Breaking a five-month deadlock, a House subcommittee approved comprehensive legislation today to revamp Federal regulation of the telephone industry.

WASHINGTON, June 18--President Carter has decided to approve the shipment of 38 tons of nuclear fuel to India, reversing a ruling by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, White House officials said today.

WASHINGTON, June 18 The gross national product, the best measure of the nation's economic performance, plunged at an annual rate of 8.5 percent in this year's second quarter, one of the largest drops on record, according to a preliminary Commerce Department estimate.

LONDON, June 18 One of Britain's most dramatic corporate battles the struggle for control of Harrods, the prestigious British department store that has long been a magnet for some of the world's richest shoppers will open at noon tomorrow.

WASHINGTON, June 18 The United States Government is about to enter the gold coin and medal market now dominated by the South African Krugerrand, the Canadian Maple Leaf and gold coins minted by the Mexican Government and the Austrian Government.

The conductors and the people behind the symphony orchestras across the country opened their 35th annual conference at the Sheraton Centre yesterday with a few words from Leonard Bernstein and a salute to Beverly Sills, the soprano, who directs the New York City Opera.

JOHANNESBURG, June 18 The police again opened fire today on rioters in a mixed-race area outside Cape Town, and South Africa's Police Minister pledged to "act relentlessly" to halt an outbreak of stoning, looting and arson that grew out of a two-month-old protest against inequalities in the country's racially segregated education system.

Representatives of New York City and the 200,000-member coalition of municipal employee unions continued negotiations into the early morning today in an effort to work out a settlement well ahead of the June 30 contract expiration.