What was going on when I was born?

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 8 (UPI)-- Arriving in Libya to the cheers of hundreds of thousands, President Hafez alAssad of Syria began talks today with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, on how to merge their two countries into a united front against Israel.

RIO CLARO, Brazil--Though Joao Conrado do Amaral Gurgel's name is a long one, it scarcely measures up to those of his competitors. They are called Fiat, Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo.

WASHINGTON IN a striking trend that is a source of growing comfort to many public health experts, American doctors are sharply cutting down their prescriptions for a broad array of sedatives, tran quilizers, painkillers and other psychoactive drugs.

A renegotiation of almost $600 million in Nicaraguan debt was completed last week on terms extremely favorable to the Central American nation's revolutionary regime.

MILE for mile, there probably has been more deliberating, ruminating and fulminating about the Hudson than any other river in the United States. The Hudson is 2,035 miles shorter than the Mississippi, but it rivals that great river's importance in American history. It probably has surpassed the Mississippi and most other major rivers in the world as the object of scientific inquiry.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8--Israel told the United States and Egypt last week that it had decided to build only four more Jewish settlements in the West Bank and that it was unlikely to move Prime Minister Menachem Begin's office to East Jerusalem in the near future, Administration officials said today.

They arrived in pinafores and bow ties, hair pulled back with ribbons, sneakers almost too new for play. Standing in the schoolyard at Public School 51 in Manhattan, they looked as if they might be guests at a wedding, not waiting for a teacher's whistle and commands to stand in line.

The four candidates for the Democratic nomination for United States Senator from New York traveled together yesterday on the final day before the primary election, still debating.

An elaborately planned jailbreak in which prisoners hoped to use 192 feet of bedsheets to escape through a hole they had gouged in a wall was foiled over the weekend at the Bronx House of Detention for Men after a guard became suspicious because all four lights were out in a shower and lavatory area.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8--The White House, responding to a new rule from the Federal Election Commission, circulated a new set of guidelines today restricting partisan political activities that may be engaged in by Cabinet members and other officials at Government expense.