What was going on when I was born?

WARSAW, Dec. 2--Meeting in an atmosphere of crisis, the Communist Party's Central Committee dismissed four members of the ruling Politburo today and returned a former Interior Minister to that body.

WHITE PLAINS, Dec. 2--Jean S. Harris returned from a trip to the Caribbean with Dr. Herman Tarnower in March 1979 --a year before the doctor was fatally shot--to find the clothing she kept in his house "slashed and ripped," according to testimony today in Westchester County Court.

BONN, Dec. 2--Next Jan. 7, an American will take over as president and chief executive of the Porsche automobile company. He has never been inside its headquarters, has yet to drive a Porsche, and until two years ago did not know enough German to get through a newspaper.

STAMFORD, Dec. 2--Conrail's new general manager, Joseph F. Spreng, declared today that the New Haven line was in a "crisis" and that an essential and long-awaited modernization program would not be completed for four years.

Most American colleges are apparently routinely asking prospective students to waive their privilege to see documents in their admissions files, which, were once confidential but were opened to students five years ago by Federal law.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2--The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly today to authorize the President during the next two and a half years to negotiate curbs on imports of Japanese cars and trucks, but the outlook for the measure in the Senate is unclear.

IT is not inconceivable that some might regard a holiday table bereft of truffles, foie gras or caviar as a gastronomic desert because for them a holiday without such culinary exotica loses basic interest. But take heart: You needn't feel inadequate, for there are other extravagances. And in an effort to determine definitively...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2--Presidentelect Ronald Reagan, drawing on both the Eastern establishment and his West Coast political associates, has decided on the four men he wants to form the inner ring of his Cabinet, well-placed Republican sources said today.

LUXEMBOURG, Dec. 2--West European leaders agreed today to extend for two more years their fixed-exchange-rate monetary system and announced a plan to encourage the wider commercial use of their new monetary unit, known as the Ecu, on private capital markets.

Former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance said yesterday that it would be a major mistake for the Reagan administration to seek more than "cosmetic" changes in the pending strategic arms treaty or to try to link a new arms control accord to Soviet behavior.