What was going on when I was born?

TEHERAN, Iran, Dec. 26--The Algerian Ambassador to Teheran said today that he had visited all 52 of the American hostages over Christmas night and that they appeared to be well.

Half of the 52 hostages in Iran were shown on American television yesterday, most of them delivering holiday greetings to their families, thanking Americans for their support and voicing hope for release from a captivity that they have now endured for 419 days.

Severe winter weather continued to chill much of the nation yesterday, reaching from the northern plains to New Orleans and gripping the East in bitter cold, while a heat wave in the West, accompanied by heavy rains and melting snow, caused floods that swept away houses and resulted in at least one death.

LONDON, Dec. 26--As 1980 draws to a close, the economic policies adopted 19 months ago by the Government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, based on an attempt to control the money supply and public spending, appear to have had little positive effect, if any, in solving Britain's deep-rooted economic problems.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26--A Presidential commission drafting a "national agenda" for the coming decade says that instead of trying to stem the decline of older cities in the Northeast and Middle West, the Federal Government should encourage people to seek jobs and other economic opportunities in the Sun Belt states of the South and Southwest.

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 26--One of El Salvador's top guerrilla commanders said today that the insurgents would begin what he called a final offensive against the American-backed civilianmilitary junta before President-elect Ronald Reagan takes office on Jan. 20.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26--The United States welcomed the new evidence today that all 52 American hostages in Iran were alive and accounted for but said that this "in no way diminishes the flagrant violation of international law and standards of conduct that their detention represents."

ISTANBUL, Turkey--The traditionally irreverent press is unusually subdued these days: no more brash headlines delying the Government, no more political feuds, no more gory photos of terrorists victims.

MOSCOW, Dec. 26 (Reuters)--A Soviet dissident who campaigned against alleged Soviet abuses of psychiatry, Aleksandr Lavut, was sentenced today to three years in prison on charges of slandering the Soviet state.

PEKING, Dec. 26 (AP)--The 87th anniversary of the birth of Chairman Mao Zedong was not mentioned today by leading Chinese newspapers.

ISTANBUL, Turkey--Probably the saddest people around town are the cartoonists who used to make their living by pillorying the Establishment.

MOSCOW, Dec. 26--Leonid I. Brezhney, the Sovier leader, met in the Kremlin today with Foreign Minister Jozef Czyrek of Poland and later expressed confidence in the Polish Communist Party's ability to overcome the country's labor and economic difficulties.