What was going on when I was born?

BASRA, Iraq, Oct. 8--Iranian troops entrenched in an oil port that the Iraqis are striving to capture have shelled and set afire at least five foreign cargo ships, sinking three of them, according to survivors who managed to swim to the Iraqi shore. At least 20 crewmen were believed to have been killed.

With Pomp and Circumstance, as well as jazz, humor and a festive New York block party, Donna E. Shalala was installed yesterday as the 10th president of Hunter College.

HOUSTON, Oct. 8--In Texas, a state with a reputation for wide-open big-time football, freewheeling high-stakes commerce and rough-and-tumble politics, the Presidential race appears to have suddenly tightened and now shapes up as a close, bruising battle to the finish.

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J. FROM the outside, it looks like any other suburban house. Specious contemporary colonial. Lots of privet. A circular drive with BMW. A compromise kind of house, the type you buy not because you're dying to live in Englewood Cliffs, but because your two children need a yard--instead of asphalt--and you don't want to be more than 15 minutes from New York City.

MILAN, Italy, Oct. 8--When Mariuccia Mandelli moved through the St. Andrew's Restaurant at the Trade Fair here to join her husband, Aldo Pinto, at lunch today, she was followed by applause all the way. It was a salute to a winner.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8--The United Automobile Workers and the Ford Motor Company asked a Government tribunal today for temporary relief against Japanese auto imports, saying protection was needed for the industry's $80 billion conversion to small, fuel-efficient cars.

Plans to build a new American Stock Exchange headquarters with state financial help in Battery Park City are likely to be abandoned, New York State and stock exchange officials said yesterday.

A 41-year-old West German stunt man, who said he had flown across the Atlantic strapped atop a small, twin-engine plane, completed his journey yesterday with a circle around the Statue of Liberty before touching down at a small airfield in New Jersey.

IT was not so long ago that historic preservation meant a quaint old house containing a quaint old lady who desperately wished that George Washington had slept there even if he hadn't. She generally asked visitors to sign a quaint old guest book and gave them a severe look if they were wearing anything so historically inappropriate as dungarees.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8--The Defense Department has presented President Carter with a potential problem in his reelection campaign by submitting a preliminary budget estimate that is $11 billion higher than the guidelines the White House laid down earlier this year for military appropriations, Pentagon and Federal budget officials said today.

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 8--The Houston Astros showed more of their remarkable talent for survival tonight when they scored four runs in the 10th inning to defeat the Philadelphia Phillies, 7-4, and tie the playoff for the National League pennant at one game apiece.