What was going on when I was born?

At Georgetown University, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain receives mantle from the Rev. J. Donald Freeze, left, and the Rev. Timothy S. Healy, right, school president. Page 4.

The Reagan Administration plans to request funds to reactivate two World War II battleships as soon as possible, and possibly two more later, when it submits a new military budget authorizing nearly $223 billion for the fiscal year 1982 to Congress next Wednesday, Pentagon and Congressional officials disclosed today. The Administration, those officials said, has decided to build a much larger fleet than previously planned. The budget request will be the first tangible evidence of the course it has set to counter what a senior naval intelligence officer has described in Congressional testimony as ''unbelievably ambitious'' Soviet program of naval construction. The revised budget, which has grown by $3 billion in recent weeks, would include about $9 billion more for the Navy to buy new ships and aircraft. That would be about 40 percent more than the Carter Administration requested for naval procurement. The new military budget, on which finishing touches are still being applied, also calls for funds to begin construction of a new class of nuclear-powered battle cruisers to be fitted with the Aegis system of radar and computer-controlled weapons for fleet defense.

A bus and subway fare increase of 10 cents to 15 cents appears to be a virtual certainty despite the aid provided in the transportation program Governor Carey will present next week, officials familiar with the plan said today. The Governor's program is aimed entirely at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's capital needs. It provides no new operating funds for the authority, leaving a deficit estimated at $100 million to $120 million for the state's new fiscal year, which begins April 1. According to Arthur G. Perfall, a spokesman for the authority, the deficit would require the agency to commit itself to a fare increase or find some other new source of revenue by July 1. That date is the authority's deadline for adopting a budget for the New York City Transit Authority.

The White House announced today that President Reagan had decided on additional budget cuts of $10 billion to $13 billion to achieve his goal of reducing the growth of Federal spending and offset a budgetary miscalculation on spending in the next fiscal year. A scheduled two-hour meeting ran 30 minutes overtime as the President and members of his Cabinet went step by step through options designed to cut the budget to meet the Administration's goal of holding Federal spending to $695.5 billion in the fiscal year 1982. This would be an increase over the estimated $654.7 billion in this year's budget, but $41.4 billion less than what the 1982 budget proposed by President Carter would have been if left unchanged. On Feb. 18, President Reagan outlined reductions in 83 programs totaling $34.4 billion and said he would announce $7 billion in additional cuts on March 10. But after the disclosure Wednesday that the Office of Management and Budget had underestimated the growth in Government spending for 1982, Mr. Reagan had to find $3 billion to $6 billion more in spending reductions to meet his goal.

More than one million people marched through the center of Madrid tonight to express their support for the nation's young democratic institutions and to condemn this week's failed military coup. Big crowds gathered elsewhere in Spain for similar demonstrations. King Juan Carlos I, who halted the coup attempt by rallying key commanders as the plot unfolded, was repeatedly cheered. A flag bearing the words ''Long Live the King!'' drew strong applause, even from young students, as did a large photograph of the King borne aloft by one man.

The National Security Council approved an expanded United States military assistance and training program today for El Salvador's armed forces, according to Pentagon sources. The program approved by President Reagan and his top advisers was said to call for an additional 30 noncombat military advisers and instructors as well as military equipment valued at about $25 million. The plan would expand a $10 million military aid program, started under the Carter Administration, with 20 advisers and instructors. Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. criticized Cuba and Nicaragua again for what officials here have called a continuing effort by the Soviet bloc to send arms to the guerrillas.

The Chrysler Corporation reported today that it had lost $1.71 billion for 1980, eclipsing the record held briefly by the Ford Motor Company for the largest loss in American corporate history. Coincidentally, the Chrysler Loan Guarantee Board voted in Washington to give Chrysler an additional $400 million in loan guarantees, which the company said it needed to survive. Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan, head of the board, said, ''I think that Chrysler's prospects are reasonably good'' - an opinion which not all analysts share. But Mr. Regan indicated that further Federal aid would be hard to get and said that Chrysler should consider a merger to survive. Chrysler promptly sold $400 million worth of 10-year notes priced to yield 15.31 percent.

At the White House, President Reagan accepts a gift presented in jest by Interior Secretary James G. Watt. It was a book of Federal regulations, split in two, and the meat cleaver that presumably was used to cut it, all mounted on a board. Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan, at left, and David A. Stockman, director of the budget, look on.

With their number depleted by reassignment and retirement, the 18 to 20 judges in Manhattan Criminal Court are more hard pressed than ever to handle the 80,000 cases filed there each year, according to the court's administrative judges. They are seeking additional judges and support workers, and the issue is scheduled to come before the joint Judiciary Committee of the State Legislature in public hearings on April 7 in Albany and May 1 in Manhattan. The judges each handle, on average, 4,000 cases a year. In interviews, some of the judges complained that the high caseload often made them mere paper-pushers stamping court documents.

Pope John Paul II returned from his 13-day trip to the Far East today and told well-wishers at the Rome airport that the most moving moments had been his visits to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two Japanese cities devastated by atomic bombs. ''In those moments I felt pulsing in my heart the anguish of people living under the terror of a possible repetition of such a catastrophe,'' the Pope said in an arrival statement in Italian. ''May the Lord hear the prayer that I address to Him so that in all humanity love will triumph over hatred and life over death and so that peace may prevail for ever over every form of war.''

If there is one message that Richard N. Gardner, the departing American Ambassador to Italy, could leave to the Republican Administration, it would be: take the Italians seriously; they are better allies than most. Mr. Gardner, who left Rome today and is to resume teaching international law at Columbia University next fall, feels that he is leaving Italian-American relations in a much healthier state than when he arrived. Most Italian politicians and journalists would agree with him. When Mr. Gardner was sent here by the Carter Administration, the Communists were basking in 1976 election gains that gave them more than a third of the popular vote for the first time, and they were pushing hard to become members of the government. Today they are in the opposition, isolated and on the defensive after several election setbacks.

The widow of the late President, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was released by the police early today after being jailed briefly yesterday in Lahore and Karachi as part of a widespread crackdown on political dissent. Nusrat Bhutto, who inherited the leadership of the opposition Pakistan People's Party after her husband was hanged two years ago, was arrested with six other prominent opposition leaders in Lahore, 175 miles southeast of here.