What was going on when I was born?

THE house-museum is a special breed of cultural artifact, not quite a house, and not quite a museum, either. It has neither the sense of domesticity of a true residence nor the air of a Great Institution that so many museums possess. It is something oddly in between. Most house-museums were, of course, houses - they were built to be lived in, and part of their appeal is in our wonderment that the processes of daily life could actually go on within such quarters, so far from a normal domestic environment as they usually are. Who could imagine sipping morning coffee within what is now the Frick Collection on Fifth Avenue, for example, or pondering a choice of wardrobe within Fenway Court, the Isabella Stuart Gardner house that is now one of Boston's most beloved museums? And the sense of absolute awe that confronts the visitor to the immense and ornate palaces of such places as Newport is surely among the major attractions these buildings hold for us. The Vanderbilt houses are notable examples of the work of Richard Morris Hunt and can be called distinguished architecture, but even the most serious architectural scholar must admit to a certain degree of voyeuristic pleasure when he or she visits these marbled quarters. Part of the appeal, in other words, is the amusement of seeing how the rich once lived.

Because of an editing error, an article in some editions of The Times yesterday incorrectly stated the number of doctors represented by the National Medical Association. The organization represents about 9,300 of the nation's black physicians.

The United States and China are jointly operating an electronic intelligence-gathering station in China to monitor Soviet missile tests, according to senior American officials. The facility was opened last year in a remote, mountainous region of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in western China, near the Soviet border. Two key Soviet missile-testing bases are at Leninsk, near the Aral Sea, and at Sary-Shagan, near Lake Balkhash. Leninsk is 500 miles from the nearest point on the Chinese border, Sary-Shagan 300 miles.

''Congress itself defined the basic relationship between costs and benefits, by placing the 'benefit' of worker health above all other considerations save those making attainment of this 'benefit' unachievable.

The Supreme Court upheld standards limiting worker exposure to cotton dust, rejecting industry contentions that regulatory costs must be balanced against benefits and dealing a blow to the Reagan Administration's antiregulation agenda. (Page A1.) Textile executives expressed disappointment with the ruling. (D5.) The court also upheld a Federal law allowing safety inspectors to conduct surprise inspections of mines and quarries without warrants. (B9.) Many conservative House Democrats said they would support the party leadership and oppose the White House on specific budget cuts. (A1.) The Democratic majority of the House Ways and Means Committee adopted a tax-cut plan centered on cuts in corporate income taxes and a one-year write-off of investment in equipment and vehicles. The plan would reduce the corporate tax rate from 46 percent to 34 percent between 1984 and 1987. (D1.)

A gunman firing at random killed three persons - including his mother - wounded seven and held several employees hostage in a bank for two hours today before the police shot him to death, authorities said. The shootings, which began at 11:30 A.M., went on for three hours before a police marksman killed the gunman as he tried to stop a hostage from leaving the Security Trust Company on the city's west side. The assailant was identified as William Bernard Griffin, 37 years old, of Rochester, and the slain bank employee as Margaret Moore, 29, of Rochester. A police spokesman said the incident began when Mr. Griffin walked into the home of his mother and stepfather and opened fire with a shotgun, killing his mother and a hired wallpaper hanger and wounding his stepfather.

One day in 1978, Jeff Carter's accountant called. ''You made it,'' he said. At the age of 26, Mr. Carter had become a millionaire - four years ahead of the schedule he had set for himself, and just 12 years after he vowed, as an eighth grader in Odessa, Tex., wearing other families' hand-me-downs, that he would never be poor again. Mr. Carter told the story as he surveyed the Houston skyline from his new office here, where the blondish, athlete-trim young entrepreneur - still more than six months shy of age 30 - operates a budding, 17-company mini-empire, founded on oil and real estate, with assets estimated at between $100 million and $200 million, that is said to have made him a millionaire several times over.

Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, visited New York for the first time yesterday and was welcomed with all of the panoply usually accorded a head of state. He was greeted by Nancy Reagan, guarded by more than 1,700 city police officers and shepherded by 300 State Department and Secret Service men who during the day managed to keep him far from several demonstrations by those sympathetic to the cause of independence for Northern Ireland. However, his evening at the Royal Ballet was marred when four Irish Republican Army supporters, two men and two women, who presumably purchased tickets to the performance, interrupted the first act of ''Sleeping Beauty'' with anti-British shouts. One man screamed, ''Charles is the Prince of Death,'' before he was hustled bodily out of the Metropolitan Opera House. The remainder of the Prince's zigzagging day was considerably more pleasant. It included a helicopter trip over Manhattan, a luncheon cruise with Mrs. Reagan around the Statue of Liberty and, after a nap at his Waldorf Towers apartment, a Lincoln Center reception, the 50th-anniversary gala benefit performance by the Royal Ballet and a ball in a vast tent set up for the occasion.

Indians in Nicaragua clash with regime A2 Survivors' children haunted by Nazi nightmare A3 Soviet trying Viktor Braikovsky, a Jewish activist A3 Argentina arrests 1,000 striking workers A4 Moroccans and Polisario trade blows at meeting in Kenya A5 U.S. may "disengage" from Namibia talks, Crocker warns A6 Haig in Manila to discuss Hanoi's activities in Southeast Asia A10 Soviet bristles at Reagan's re- marks A11 U.S. seeking international pres- sure against Vietnam A12 Haig's visit said to bolster Deng in party meetings A16 Iranian Parliament postpones de- bate on removal of Bani-Sadr A17 Government/Politics Mayors shift course toward Rea- gan at parley A20 Promotion of infant formula in U.S. assailed at House hearing A26 New York seeking review of rejec- tion of tax on oil companies B2 Issues of police and schools delay New York City budget B3 Miss Holtzman weighing race for Brooklyn District Attorney B7 House panel votes to continue U.S. loans to students B11 General Around the Nation A20 Boy, 6, may be key witness in Coast abduction trial A21 Order to merge school districts near Pittsburgh brings battle A24 Jury selection to be key factor in Lennon murder trial B2 New York City's traffic agents complain of abuse B3 Industry/Labor Miners' council approves accord on ending strike A22 Home Section Home Celebrities celebrate the urban garden C1 How to take care of fine mahog- any C7 A premium on men in retirement life C1 Design Notebook: Winterthur: More museum than house C1 Hers C2 Helpful Hardware C2 Home Beat C3 A program that provides materi- als for arts groups C3 Home Improvement C4 American craft museum shows five artists at work C6 How a London firm designed its success C8 At Your Service: The specialists in architectural antiques C8 Calendar of events C9 Gardening C12 Arts/Entertainment Grand design rules Royal Ballet's "Sleeping Beauty" C13 Writers' strike idles half the be- hind-the-scenes workers C15 Procter & Gamble's guidelines for TV called "conservative" C17 Jules Feiffer's "Grownups" is staged at Harvard C18 David McCullough's "Mornings on Horseback" is reviewed C21 Quintero stages O'Neill's "Weld- ed" C22 John J. Geoghegan resigns as chairman of publishing house C32 New York City to honor seven for contributions to arts C32 Obituaries Harry Gilroy, former foreign cor- respondent for The Times B14 Dr. Jule G. Charney, leader in weather research B14 Roy J. Carver, Iowa multimillion- aire and philanthropist B14 Sports Baseball negotiators fail to meet; owners support Grebey B15 For two Mets, it's back to the sandlots B15 Cosmos beat Diplomats, 2-1 B15 Practice over, golfers brace for the start of the Open B15 State racing told to justify need for legislative assistance B16 Dave Anderson on the U.S. Open and Merion's mystique B19 News Analysis Hedrick Smith analyzes deepen- ing U.S.-Soviet chill A1 Bernard Gwertzman assesses new Chinese-American relationship A15 Adam Clymer on dangers in G.O.P's focus on social issues B12 Editorials/Letters/Op-Ed Editorials A30 There's no ducking a transit tax Mr. Watt's regulatory strip Iran's own mess Topics: school gates / new digs Letters A30 William Safire: "those upraised hands" A31 Anthony Lewis: living by the sword A31 Deborah Cramer: preserve bar- rier beaches A31 Karin M. Lissakers: why Con- gress barred bribery abroad A31

Americans' personal income rose six-tenths of 1 percent in May, the Commerce Department reported yesterday. Economists said that the modest increase indicated that the economy was slowing from this year's robust first quarter and that consumer paychecks were barely keeping pace with inflation. ''The figures show the consumer and inflation running neck and neck,'' said Dr. Walter Heller, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

The United States has met with Iraq to seek a compromise that would condemn Israel's June 7 raid on Iraq's nuclear reactor but not demand an arms embargo against the Israelis. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the American chief delegate, and Saadun Hamadi, Foreign Minister of Iraq, have been consulting away from the Security Council, where a debate on the raid is under way. The two diplomats are trying to agree on a resolution that would not compel a veto by the United States or its allies in the Security Council. Both also consulted with Secretary General Kurt Waldheim.

International French oversight of an Iraqi reactor was insured under a secret accord, the Government in Paris reported. It said that the pact would have made it impossible for Baghdad to make nuclear weapons without being detected at the reactor destroyed by Israeli jets on June 7. Under the agreement, France was to have kept scientists working at the reactor until 1989. They were authorized to watch all nuclear experiments and to check the reactor afterward. (Page A1, Column 1.) Iraq's nuclear objectives were discussed by Under Secretary of State Walter J. Stoessel Jr. in House testimony. He said that the Administration was ''concerned'' about Iraq's nuclear program, but that it did not agree with Israel's assertion that the reactor bombed by Israel was designed to produce nuclear arms. (A18:5-6.)