What was going on when I was born?

Two of President-elect Ronald Reagan's closest advisers have urged on him an emergency program intended to head off what they describe as an "economic Dunkirk" threatening to overwhelm the new administration.

The British Broadcasting Corporation has agreed to make its several thousand hours of programming a year available in the United States exclusively for 10 years to a new cable television network. The network is scheduled to begin operations in January 1982 and will serve subscribers who pay a monthly fee.

BETHESDA, Md., Dec. 10--J.W. Marriott Jr., president and chief executive officer of the Marriott Corporation, spends a lot of time snipping ribbons these days.

An arbitrator recommended yesterday that New York City sanitation workers be paid an additional $11 a shift when they perform collection duties on new twoman refuse trucks. All the present trucks require three men.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10--A new Federal study calls for increased regulation of the markets for Governmentguaranteed securities because of evidence of trading abuses, fraud and overspeculation.

THE one thing they aren't is necessary. Useful, attractive, pleasant, yes, but not necessary. So what? The world is full of unnecessary things that are bought hand over fist, and the pleasant frivolities might just as well be among them. The frivolities are known as environmental scents, not only because this sounds impressive, but because, amazingly enough, the name actually describes the products in question.

NEW DELHI, Dec. 10--Leonid I. Brezhnev invited the United States and other world powers today to join the Soviet Union in a formal compact to forswear military and naval intervention in the Persian Gulf.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 (AP)--Retall sales rose 1.6 percent last month, the Government reported today, displaying surprising resilience in the face of soaring interest rates. Private economists cautioned, however, that the continued rate rise would dampen sales in coming months.

In an ominous sign for the economy, the prime lending rate rose a full percentage point yesterday, to 20 percent, reaching the record set last April shortly after President Carter declared a national emergency to deal with inflation.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 10-- Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Saudi Arabia's oil minister, indicated today that his country would be willing to raise its oil prices if other oil-exporting nations would agree to limit their prices.

THE client rarely even made coffee for herself and couldn't boil the proverbial egg. Yet she entertained a lot. So when she decided to renovate the kitchen in her East Side cooperative apartment, it seemed logical that the kitchen should not be built to her specifications or for her use, but for those who would be cooking there--caterers and their chefs.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10--The Senate bowed today to President Carter's threat of a veto and deleted from a stopgap financing bill an amendment prohibiting Justice Department intervention in lawsuits involving the busing of schoolchildren to achieve desegregation.