What was going on when I was born?

WASHINGTON, July 25--Attorney General Benjamin R. Civiletti, who has repeatedly said that he never discussed the Justice Department's investigation of Billy Carter with the President or White House aides, disclosed today that he in fact had one "brief, informal exchange" on the matter with President Carter in the Oval Office on June 17.

Workmen at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine yesterday morning began unwrapping eight mysterious brown-paper bundles that had been tucked away over the water pipes in a maintenance storeroom.

OTTAWA, July 25--Canada faced a new political crisis today when Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Premier Peter Lougheed of Alberta broke off two days of talks without agreeing on how to share the benefits of domestic oil and gas production.

WASHINGTON, July 25--Roughly 40 disgruntled Democratic members of Congress met today to discuss a move to throw open the Democratic National Convention so that it could choose a Presidential nominee other than President Carter or Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, according to several participants.

FRESNO, Calif., July 24--One morning six weeks ago, three men with pistols under their coats appeared at the door of John Atachian's jewelry shop in this central California city. Though the men were not robbers, Mr. Atachian might be happier now if they had been.

WASHINGTON, July 25--The Carter Administration today ordered the withdrawal of a United States military training mission from Bolivia and said it would cancel economic aid projects to protest the July 17 military takeover of the La Paz Government.

A 30-year-old violinist was alive when her killer hurled her, nude and bound, into an airshaft from the roof of the Metropolitan Opera House Wednesday night or Thursday morning, the New York City Medical Examiner said yesterday. He said she died of skull fractures and other injuries suffered in the fall.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., July 25-- City officials, responding to a plea by the Rev. Jesse Jackson for a "low profile" presence in the violence-torn Alton Park section, withdrew all police patrols from streets where seven officers were wounded from ambush last night.

The State Department said yesterday that the Iranian Foreign Ministry had promised to "look into" a declaration by the prosecutor's office in Teheran that it had no knowledge of the whereabouts of an American journalist reportedly detained 11 weeks ago in the Iranian capital.

MATLAB, Bangladesh, July 25--Back in the capital, Dr. M.A. Matin, the Minister of Health and Family Planning, was clearly optimistic about reducing the high birthrate of this densely populated country. But in this rural region where birth-control studies have been going on for nearly two decades, fieldworkers are leery of predicting breakthroughs.

COPENHAGEN, July 25 (Reuters) --Natalya Malachuskaya, one of three Leningrad feminists who left for exile earlier this week, was ejected by the police today from the United Nations Women's Conference.

ANKARA, Turkey, July 25--Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel and the opposition leader, former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, have agreed to support legislation reinforcing the authority of the army and the courts against terrorism, it was announced here today.