What was going on when I was born?

William Behrle 3d, left, and Michael Benson placing contaminated equipment in bags yesterday after leaving the reactor containment building at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Middletown, Pa.

Peter Sellers, the comedian whose zany film roles ranged from a duchess to a wild nuclear expert, died early this morning in Middlesex Hospital in London, a day after he was striken with a massive heart attack. He was 54 years old and had suffered several heart attacks in recent years.

OW I'm really paranoid," said the owner of a cooperative apartment in a Brooklyn brownstone after two detectives from the Crime Prevention Section of the New York City Police Department got through doing a security check on her home.

Faced with preliminary census figures suggesting the possibility of a significant population decline in New York City since 1970, city officials yesterday began a block-by-block review of utility, housing and other records in an effort to show that thousands of New Yorkers had not yet been counted.

NEW DELHI, July 23 The Government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi announced today a major role for free enterprise in the Indian economy and a "restructuring" of money-losing stateowned industries to bring in efficient management.

WASHINGTON, July 23 Time is running out for international action to prevent a starving, overcrowded, polluted, resource-poor world, according to a report for President Carter prepared by the State Department and Council on Environmental Quality.

The deal that Billy Carter tried to arrange between the Charter Company and the Libyan National Oil Company has focused attention on the indirect ways that oil companies, particularly such small oil concerns as Charter, obtain crude for their refineries.

THOSE lines of T.S. Eliot haunt me. They run through my mind every day now when I am walking home from work. "Into the rose-garden."

DETROIT, July 23 New-car sales of the Big Three domestic auto makers, on a daily selling basis, fell 27.7 percent in mid-July from a year before, the manufacturers reported today.

DETROIT, July 23 The American automobile manufacturers are preparing for this fall's new model introduction with some new, fuel-efficient import fighters that they hope will help them recapture part of the 25 percent of the market now lost to foreign companies.

The City Investing Company, owner of the Home Insurance Company and other valuable properties, announced yesterday that its board had turned down an offer from Tamco Enterprises Inc, a privately held real estate concern, to buy City Investing's assets for a price equal to $32.50 for each share of City Investing common stock.