What was going on when I was born?

WASHINGTON THE Saturday night queues already had begun at Gepetto, Viet Huong, Bistro Francais, The Big Cheese and other gourmet stops along Georgetown's restaurant row. Inside Yates Fieldhouse on the Georgetown University campus, however, Hana Mandlikova, her body still experiencing jet lag after a 15-hour trip from Prague and Amsterdam, was trading shots with Betty Stove, her coach and friend. Wearing a white sweatshirt for part of the practice with the words ''It's Great to Be A Champion'' printed across the front, Miss Mandlikova seemed oblivious to time zones or travel fatigue. She bounced on her toes, waved a wooden racquet almost magically in her right hand, punched through volleys and put away over heads. ''That T-shirt looks good on you,'' an impressed spectator said, at the conclusion of the 45-minute drill that attracted curious crowds of students from adjacent basketball and tennis courts.

A dispatch by United Press International in Saturday's editions reported incorrectly that Belau, formerly the Palau Islands in Micronesia, became an independent nation on Jan. 1. In fact, on that date Belau installed its first constitutional government, but it will continue to operate as a United States-administered trust territory.

The turbulent trading floor of the Chicago Board of Trade has often been described as a circus, but on the afternoon of New Year's Eve, it came closer than usual to being one. With traditional whimsy, the exchange fathers watched attentively from the trading pits as Dalmatians jumped roped, monkeys pranced through the aisles and clowns passed out presents and baloons. It was the Board of Trade's annual rite for children of the staff and members of the exchange. Celebrating another year of record volume on the exchange and in the futures trading industry, the partygoers were in a distinctly more festive mood than early last year when the grain embargo and the collapse of the silver markets slowed futures trading to a crawl.

A report that Iran had transferred three Americans from the Foreign Ministry in Teheran to a secret location, possibly with some of the other 49 hostages, has left United States officials surprised and concerned, the Carter Administration said today. The move, first reported early today by Pars, the Iranian press agency, was said to involve L. Bruce Laingen, who as charge d'affaires is the senior United States diplomat in Iran; Victor L. Tomseth, a political officer, and Michael Howland, a State Department security officer. The three had been living under relatively comfortable conditions in the Foreign Ministry since the seizure of the hostages Nov. 4, 1979. Proposals Are 'Under Study' The Pars report quoted Ahmad Azizi, who holds the title of Director of Hostage Affairs, as saying that the three had been moved ''to a more appropriate place of residence.''

Spurred by the feminist movement of the last decade, women's history libraries and collections across the United States have opened their doors and are expanding as never before. The giants among them, notably the Elizabeth and Arthur Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Mass., and the Sophia Smith Collection, at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., both founded in the early 1940's, are being showered with donations and students' and authors' requests for access. Research visits at the Schlesinger - considered the foremost repository in the country devoted solely to women's history -shot up from 247 in 1970 to more than 4,000 in 1980. The 20,000 volumes in the library, including 3,000 cookbooks, grew from 8,000 in 1968. The great collections at the Schlesinger range from those of Betty Friedan and the National Organization for Women to ''the French chef,'' Julia Child; from the records of the Lydia Pinkham Company, maker of ''little pink pills,'' to those of the suffragists, the abolitonists and the Female Bible Society of Boston and Vicinity. The Sophia Smith Collection is famous above all for the papers of Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement; its lesser-known photo collection is choice and historic.

The value of the dollar in international financial markets should remain fairly stable during 1981, foreign currency analysts and economists predict. Currency market observers generally agree that a slight decline at most is in store for the dollar, even though American interest rates - whose lofty heights were a principal source of the currency's strength in 1980 - are expected to decline further in the months ahead. ''At the end of this year, the dollar will be about where it is now, relative to most other major currencies,'' said Charles Ramond, president of the Predex Corporation, a New York-based currency forecasting service. Raymond Jallow, chief economist of the United California Bank in Los Angeles, agreed. ''The dollar,'' he said, ''will maintain a relatively stable position in the international currency basket.'' Gary E. Schlossberg, an economist at the Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco, said, ''The dollar will probably decline, but it will be very modest.''

A bitter, running feud between the Islamic fundamentalists who hold most of the power here and President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr and his more liberal supporters has spread to what has been the main source of unity in this embattled nation: the conduct of the war with Iraq. As the political infighting has grown ever fiercer, the clerics of the Islamic Republican Party have begun an attack over the last few days on Mr. Bani-Sadr's last redoubt of authority, his title of commander in chief, charging that he has failed to put the military on the attack. The political battling is being carried on with an unheard-of openness in this society, formerly a place of regal totalitarianism, with daily salvos fired by rival newspapers, by speeches, prayers, chanted slogans and demonstrations, by innuendo and rumor, and by the use of street thugs. Bani-Sadr Complains to Khomeini The power struggle has reached a point at which President BaniSadr sent a supposedly confidential letter a month ago to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - soon leaked to become a matter of almost universal gossip - complaining about his clerical rivals and threatening to resign if their power was not curbed. The clergy has responded with direct public attacks on ''liberals'' and the President himself.

The scallop harvest is under way off Long Island, and Bill Canaday, one of 200 baymen in Suffolk County who make a living by shellfishing, says that ''pirates'' began hauling the best of the catch as soon as the word got out that scallops were back in the Great South Bay for the first time in years. The pirates are baymen who take more than the legal limit of 10 bushels a day, or who stay out past sunset, or who dredge too close to the shore. By some estimates, they account for 75 percent of the boats working the cold waters between here and Fire Island, off the South Shore of Long Island. Such pirating is punishable by fines of from $250 to $1,000 and possible confiscation of the boat and equipment involved.

International Two Americans were slain in El Salvador and the head of the country's Institute for Agrarian Transformation, with whom they had been dining, was also shot to death in the Sheraton Hotel in San Salvador. The Americans were Michael Hammer, 42 years old, of Potomac, Md., and Mark Pearlman, 26, of Seattle. Both were working as advisers to El Salvador's Government-sponsored land redistribution program. The slain Salvadoran was Jose Rodolfo Viera. President Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador said the murders were ''almost certainly an action by the extreme right.'' (Page A1, Column 6.) Surprise and concern were expressed by the Carter Administration over a report that Iranian authorities have transferred the senior American diplomat in Teheran and two aides from the Foreign Ministry to a secret place with some of the other 49 hostages. (A1:4.)

American officials, concerned with the continental impact of Canada's new nationalistic energy policies, have quietly initiated a series of discussions with their Canadian counterparts. At the latest meeting, a five-hour session held in Washington Dec. 17, Americans pressed the Canadian delegation for more detail and explanation on the tough energy policy outlines announced Oct. 28 by the Liberal Government of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. The plan, involving a complex set of policy and tax rules, aims at dramatically increasing Canadian ownership of this country's petroleum industry, now about 72 percent controlled by foreign companies, mostly American. Already there are signs that some large oil companies are having second thoughts about their future in Canada.

Senate Democrats preparing for the confirmation hearings of Alexander M. Haig Jr. have sent the White House a second letter asking for information about him, this time narrowing the request to specific controversial periods of his career. The Carter Administration will try to provide at least some of the tapes and documents requested, Jody Powell, President's Carter's press secretary, said today. The Senate Democrats have also sent a second request for files to Richard M. Nixon. The former President's attorney, Herbert J. Miller, said today that the request was still ''so broad as to create substantial difficulty.'' But Mr. Miller said that he was seeking to meet with Senator Claiborne Pell, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, to narrow the panel's request still further. He said, ''If there's anything like a reasonable request, I don't think there would be any difficulty'' in getting Mr. Nixon not to oppose release of materials.

''If you try hard, God will understand when you fail.'' - President Carter, teaching his last Sunday school class as President at the First Baptist Church in Washington. (B8:6.)