What was going on when I was born?

A 35-year-old truck driver was charged with murder today, and the police appeared to feel that they had broken the case of the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, believed responsible for the deaths of 13 women during the last five years. Peter Sutcliffe, who lived quietly with his wife in the city of Bradford, where several of the murders were committed, was arraigned on a charge of having committed only the most recent of the killings, the murder of a 20-year-old college student in November. The word of the arrest had spread and 1,000 people, many of them shouting ''Hang him!'' and other abuse, stood outside the courtroom as policemen rushed the suspect in and out under a blue blanket. His wife, Sonia, a schoolteacher, watched the proceedings from the public gallery.

The United States said today that the three Americans formerly held in the Iranian Foreign Ministry had successfully resisted an attempt to move them 11 days before they were transferred on Saturday to a secret location in Teheran. The State Department said it had received a message from the Swiss Embassy in Teheran confirming a report by Pars, the Iranian press agency, that the three Americans, including L. Bruce Laingen, the senior American diplomat in Iran, had been moved ''to a location where at least some of the other 49 hostages are being held.'' ''We have been told this was done to consolidate the Government's control over all of the hostages,'' John H. Trattner, the department spokesman, said. He added that the United States could not verify the report and did not know where the Americans were being held.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will resume paying the Grumman Flxible Corporation a $54 million balance owed for 837 buses, 637 of which have been delivered and have developed structural cracking, and the authority will return the buses to use after they have been repaired. In announcing this last night, Richard Ravitch, the M.T.A.'s chairman, said the buses could be back on the streets of New York within four months. Mr. Ravitch made the announcement after a meeting at M.T.A. headquarters, 347 Madison Avenue, between officials of the authority, Grumman and the city. City Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin, in a compromise on his earlier refusal to concur in paying for what he called ''a defective product,'' agreed to the payment of $10 million to Grumman ''within 24 to 48 hours.'' This would be for the 637 buses already delivered and removed from service last month for safety reasons.

Thousands of reports of heatless apartments have swamped New York City's emergency complaint switchboard during the last three days of bitter cold. Yesterday, throughout the city and the Northeast, people bundled against blustery winds and coped with widespread delays in transportation as cars, subways, buses and trains faltered. In response to the cold, Mayor Koch and New York City's Housing Commissioner, Anthony B. Gliedman, announced a $715,000 program intended to quicken the city's reaction to cold-weather emergencies. For commuters, moderating temperatures in the afternoon eased problems in the homebound rush. Today, temperatures are expected to reach the low 30's and a snowfall of two to three inches was forecast by the city's Sanitation Department. (Page B3.)

SUB WATER/Page B1 By ROBERT HANLEY New York City's reservoir system in the headwaters of the Delaware River slipped into ''drought emergency'' status yesterday, prompting New Jersey's Governor Byrne to appeal for a strategy meeting of the Governors of the four states on the Delaware River Basin Commission. Officials of the commission said the session could lead to some form of mandatory controls or restrictions on the use of potable or industrial water in portions of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware situated in the 13,000-square mile basin. The ''drought emergency'' was reached with three reservoirs, the Neversink, the Pepacton and the Cannonsville, slipping below 88 billon gallons to 32 percent of capacity. And while New York City is not subject to the rulings of the commission, city officials said yesterday it was possible that mandatory controls would be imposed in the city by early next month unless the voluntary conservation of water increased.

lican Senators (Page B10) NEW CONGRESS: HARMONY AND SKIRMISHES BY MARTIN TOLCHIN WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 - The 97th Congress convened today, and different parties took control of the House and Senate for the first time since 1932, their pledges of bipartisan cooperation quickly giving way to partisan verbal skirmishes. The new, more conservative Congress convened in a party atmosphere, with children running through the aisles of the House while some freshmen members bottle-fed infants on their laps and family members and friends waved from the galleries. The session is expected to focus on the economy, budget, taxes, national defense, the American role in world affairs, proposed cutbacks in social programs and possibly on such issues as abortion, busing and organized prayer in schools. Diminished Status for Democrats In the Senate, Democrats appeared to be adjusting to their diminished status by accepting the inevitability of the confirmation of Alexander M. Haig Jr., President-elect Ronald Reagan's nominee for Scretary of State. In the House, however, Democratic leaders sought rules changes and favorable committee ratios to ward off a possible alliance between Republicans and conservative Democrats.

SEVERAL DISEASES By HAROLD M. SCHMECK Jr. HUMAN growth hormone produced in bacteria that have been manipulated by gene-splicing techniques is expected to be tested for the first time in humans within the next several weeks, but it is unclear whether the first tests will be in Europe or the United States. Some medical scientists hope the hormone will prove valuable in a broad range of medical uses including healing of fractures, regrowth of tissues after severe burns, healing of injured cartilage and treatment of cases of bleeding peptic ulcers in patients who are seriously ill. It has even been considered for treating some children with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

There is a great deal of hustle and bustle, but in the gray chill of a winter's day, nothing is really happening at Three Mile Island. Uniformed guards are busy with security. Parking lots overflow, tickets are issued to cars improperly parked, and platoons of workers in hard hats show up promptly for their scheduled shifts. In the bitter cold, tourists shiver on the adjacent banks of the Susquehanna River, their cameras recording the stark architecture an entire nation knows only too well - the four huge cooling towers of the power plant that has become the symbol of nuclear misadventure. Everybody agrees that something ought to be done here. But they do not agree on what or how or where or when. In short,the cleanup of the crippled Three Mile Island 2 nuclear power plant has come to a virtual standstill. A complex knot of technological, bureaucratic, environmental, procedural and emotional issues surrounds the question of what to do with between 596,000 and 750,000 gallons of highly radioactive water that flooded the sump and basement of T.M.I. 2's containment building 20 months ago. Internal systems of the plant are still leaking into the sump at the rate of one-tenth of a gallon a minute. The water in the containment building is now eight and a half feet deep and is rising by about an inch every month.

The leadership here of the Reagan transition team has urged the President-elect to maintain the independence of the Office of the United States Trade Representative instead of downgrading it and making it report to the President through the Commerce Department. A memorandum prepared by Stanton D. Anderson, who is overseeing the transitions at both the Commerce Department and the trade office, argues against any short-term reorganization, pointing to opposition by Congress, industry and agricultural interests. Mr. Anderson, a trade lawyer, notes in the memo, which was summarized for a reporter, that the Trade Act of 1974 states specifically that the special trade representative ''shall report directly to the President and to Congress.''

Prospects that interest rates will continue to fall improved yesterday as the Federal Reserve System announced a sharp drop in the nation's money supply and as a leading bank cut its prime lending rate to 20 percent, the lowest level among the nation's major banks. The move by the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, which reduced its prime rate from a record 21 1/2 percent, came only minutes after the Federal Reserve announced that the basic measure of the nation's money supply declined $2.8 billion in the financial week ended Dec. 24. ''I'm hopeful the worst is over,'' said Willard C. Butcher, president and chief executive officer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, referring to the high cost of credit. Dow Climbs 19.88, to 992.66 Financial markets reacted strongly to yesterday's news. The Dow Jones industrial average soared 19.88 points, to 992.66; bond prices surged, and the average rate on six-month Treasury bills at yesterday's weekly auction fell to 13.18 percent from 13.41 percent in the previous week. (Pages D1 and D10.)

President-elect Ronald Reagan joined President Jose Lopez Portillo of Mexico today in a pledge to establish a ''personal relationship'' as the basis for easing tensions and renewing friendship between Mexico and the United States. Greeting each other at the Bridge of Friendship connecting this Mexican bor- Text of joint statement is on page A8. der community with El Paso, Tex., Mr. Reagan and Mr. Lopez Portillo smiled broadly and clasped arms before holding what a senior aide to the President-elect later described as ''an enormously successful meeting, full of symbolism.'' ''This has been a meeting of friends,'' Mr. Lopez Portillo said.

FOR 35 of the 60-odd years that Joseph Bliss strained to keep his mysterious illness a secret, he wrote down his observations of his own strange behavior - how he would uncontrollably and repeatedly hiss and make loud nasal noises, grind his teeth, blink and squeeze his eyelids, twist his neck and torso, jerk his arms and legs, twitch his nose, click his tongue, pluck at his clothing, tear paper or stab at it with a pencil point and become plagued by phantom fixations, such as the perception of a palpable bond between his eyes and the eyes of any person he might be speaking to. With difficulty, Mr. Bliss managed to hide his embarrassing tics from others by secluding himself when he felt them about to begin. In his 43 years as an industrial chemist, he had to seek several minutes of privacy in a washroom or a stockroom as many as several dozen times a day. ''A very large part of my life,'' he wrote of his years from age 8 to 71, ''has been consumed, and still is, in the seemingly endless effort to control the condition.''