What was going on when I was born?

Because of a dispute over price, a plan by the Standard Oil Company (Ohio) to buy $750 million worth of coal and mining facilities from the United States Steel Corporation has collapsed, the companies announced yesterday. In December, the two had announced that U.S. Steel would sell Sohio three mines producing low-sulfur coal and 888 million tons of Appalachian coal reserves for an estimated $750 million. Neither company explained why the deal collapsed, beyond stating that they could not reach an agreement on price. Neverthless, such a price for coal in the ground had seemed high to coal industry officials and Wall Street analysts. The companies had originally hoped to come to a definitive agreement by the end of 1980.

Michel Guerard, the high priest of nouvelle cuisine, is experiencing a minor loss of faith: What was intended as a breath of fresh air, he says, is inducing claustrophobia. ''Today, everywhere you go in France, you find the same menus, the same dishes with even the same names, the same flavors,'' he said during an interview in his office on the Avenue de l'Opera. ''There is nothing original.'' When, a little more than a decade ago, Mr. Guerard and his fellow chefs Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel and Jean and Pierre Troisgros popularized the idea of simpler, less rich French cooking, they started on the way to worldwide influence. Today nouvelle restaurants thrive all over France, Britain, West Germany and the United States. The food many of them serve, Mr. Guerard insists, lacks dignity, nobility, pride and nuance.

A FRESH perspective on women's roles, job opportunities and sex stereotypes is coming these days from the Ford Foundation, and it is a change that could shake up traditional thinking well beyond the world of philanthropy. ''We're applying what I call a 'feminist lens' in reviewing everything Ford undertakes,'' said Susan V. Berresford, chief program officer. This means scrutinizing 300 aid projects in the United States and 25 other countries to determine their impact on women, particularly the poor. Closer to home, the review has extended to Ford's own staffing policies, and some innovations are already in place. Item: On the assumption that child-rearing should be a shared responsibility, Ford recently modified parental leave, permitting fathers to take up to eight weeks of paid leave to spend time with newborn or adopted youngsters. Such practices prevail in Norway and Sweden, but Ford officials believe this is a ''first'' here.

Administration officials said today that President Reagan was considering a request to Congress to repeal the embargo on military aid to Argentina. The officials made the statement after Mr. Reagan met with Gen. Roberto Viola, who has been designated to become Argentina's president on March 29. Mr. Reagan said that he had a ''good discussion'' with the Argentine leader and that he looked forward ''to efforts by both Governments to further improve our relations.'' ''I have extended to General Viola my best wishes for his tenure as president,'' Mr. Reagan said. Earlier today, General Viola met informally with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill, where he was said to have pledged to make more of an effort to identify some of the 6,000 people reported to have been arrested or abducted by Argentine security forces.

Last-minute efforts to overcome a deadlock in the coal labor negotiations here failed late this afternoon, and leaders of the United Mine Workers of America sent the union's 39-member bargaining council home. With that action, a strike on March 27 is unavoidable, union leaders said. The almost certain walkout of 160,000 union miners in the coal fields of Appalachia and the Middle West was set in motion at 4:30 P.M. today, when officials of the Bituminous Coal Operators Association did not respond to the union's latest proposal. Sam Church Jr., who became the mine workers' president 16 months ago, called negotiators for the industry at 3 P.M. and gave them an hour and a half to arrange to negotiate over the union's latest proposal. It had been made after bargaining stalled before dawn today. No further bargaining sessions were scheduled.

The state's Job Incentive Program, which has come under attack for granting millions of dollars in tax relief to businesses that did not need it, would be abolished under a proposal expected to be presented by Governor Carey tomorrow. State officials made known the Governor's intention today as the program's board of directors granted $150 million in 10-year tax credits to 100 companies, including $4.5 million for Tiffany & Company of New York City. Among the other companies awarded tax credits were the American Steel and Aluminum Corporation, the Irving Trust Company, the Asian International Bank and the Columbia Broadcasting System and the New York Futures Exchange. An aide to Mr. Carey said the Governor's proposal would limit the credits to helping businesses to expand or to invest in transitional or distressed areas. This was the original purpose of the Jobs Incentive Program, but critics say it has not been followed. The aide, who asked not to be identified, declined to provide details of the proposal, such as whether a new agency would be sought to handle these credits.

A late sinking spell sent the Dow Jones industrial average sharply lower yesterday following Monday's 17-point surge that had carried the indicator above the 1,000 mark that often has touched off selling. The Dow fell 10.26 points, to 992.53, after moving ahead briefly when several major banks joined the move to a lower prime lending rate at 17 1/2 percent. Bond prices, meanwhile, gained. Trading accelerated with the slide in stock prices. Turnover expanded to 65.9 million shares from Monday's 49.9 million. The first hour, when stock prices held relatively firm, was the busiest period as 17.8 million shares changed hands.

Any week now, the Chamber of Commerce here is going to reconsider the merits of incorporating this town of 34,000 inhabitants about 25 miles northeast of Charlotte, in the heart of textile country. The chamber had completed a preliminary report on the subject when the takeover bid for Cannon Mills, which manufactures half of the towels sold in the United States each year and is the largest employer in Kannapolis, ended consideration of the issue last January. While Cannon's board quickly rejected the bid, the prospect of a takeover by a group of investors, led by Harold S. Geneen, the former chairman of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, raised fears in this community. For more than 50 years, the company had been run single-handedly by Charles Cannon, known as Mr. Charlie; he died in 1971, but his family and trusts still control 40 percent of the stock. ''After years of seeing the directors every day, there would suddenly be an absentee landlord here,'' said Bach@man Brown, a Kannapolis attorney. ''The welfare of Cannon is the welfare of the community. It means jobs and, indirectly, other things.''

Energy Secretary James B. Edwards leaned forward at the witness table, his feet crossed at the ankles, his hands fidgeting with a large rubber band. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, sitting in as chairman of the Joint Economic Committee at a recent hearing, pounced with a question about the costs to consumers of the Administration's decision to lift price controls on gasoline and heating oil, his aides unveiling in quick succession three colored charts that portrayed the action as almost too onerous for words. Mr. Edwards, apparently taken aback, ventured only that one can ''prove almost anything'' with statistics. He went on to lament the lack of courtesy in not being shown the charts beforehand. A few minutes later it was Representative Fred Richmond's turn. Why was it, demanded the Brooklyn Democrat, that the Administration was cutting Federal aid to energy-efficient mass transit when Europeans were moving in just the opposite direction?

Two bomb squad detectives were burned yesterday morning when an incendiary device they were examining exploded outside the Bleecker Street publication office of the Youth International Party, known in the 1960's as the Yippies. The detectives, suffering lacerations and second-degree burns on face and arms, were listed in satisfactory condition at Bellevue Hospital. They are James J. O'Connor, 37 years old, and Kenneth J. Dudonis, 38. The police said the detectives had gone to 9 Bleecker Street, near the Bowery in the East Village, after an anonymous woman caller said there was a suspicious ticking package on the sidewalk. The officers were about to put on protective gear and remove the cardboard box when it went off at 9:30 A.M. The police described the device as ''low yield'' and said they had no clues about who had placed it or whom it was directed against.

THERE have been times when taste sensations quite palpably shaped my career. I recall distinctly the first time I tasted classic French cooking, and the sensation was of such dimension as to seem almost spiritual. In 1950 I was 30 years old and living in Paris as a student of language at the Alliance Fran,caise on the Boulevard Raspail. In those years, I walked from one end of the city to the other. Once or twice I would indulge myself in a meal at one bistro or another, and thus I had eaten sauerkraut at the Brasserie Lipp, a dish of scrambled eggs flavored with fresh tarragon at a place, now defunct, called Le Bossu on the Ile St. Louis. But it had not been pointed out to me that there was such a thing as regional cooking and quite another called cuisine classique.

New-home construction fell 25 percent last month to 1.2 million units from 1.6 million, the Commerce Department said. The decline indicated that the U.S. economy may be slowing. But economists warned that a one-month change is not sufficient evidence of an economic trend. (D1.) U.S. industrial production fell five-tenths of 1 percent in February after six monthly increases, the Federal Reserve said. The decline included sharp drops for primary metals, instruments, furniture and lumber. (D7.)