What was going on when I was born?

In one of its most stinging attacks on the independent union Solidarity, the Polish Government accused the organization today of ''aggressive and arrogant behavior'' and of sabotaging talks aimed at ending the crisis over food shortages. The broadside was issued as several hundred thousand workers in the southern industrial and mining region of Silesia struck for four hours over food shortages and the Government's handling of Poland's economic plight. The Government's accusation, and a milder retort from Solidarity, appeared to signal the momentary collapse of discussions on many issues, including short-term measures to improve the food supply and efforts to expand the union's access to state-run news organizations. The two sides held 10 hours of talks yesterday.

Secretary of the Interior James G. Watt announced today that he would not attempt to sell oil-drilling leases on 80 million acres of ocean floor off northern California until at least 1983. The leasing proposal has drawn strong opposition from Californians who fear environmental damage. Mr. Watt said he had decided against recommending to President Reagan that four large basins, stretching from the area of the Oregon border to the vicinity of Big Sur, be offered for leasing for the exploration of oil and natural gas. He said he had made the decision because of uncertainties arising from a July 27 ruling by a Federal district judge in Los Angeles blocking the sale of oil-drilling leases on 31 tracts in a fifth ocean basin off San Luis Obispo County, north of Santa Barbara.

Soviet press attacks on the independent labor movement in Poland have returned in recent days to an intensity not seen since before the emergency congress of the Polish Communist Party last month. Western diplomats who have monitored Soviet reactions since the trouble began last year doubt that the Kremlin envisages any overt intervention now. Although the Soviet Navy is staging extensive maneuvers off Poland's Baltic coast, the diplomats say intelligence reports do not show a corresponding increase in readiness levels of Soviet and other Warsaw Pact ground forces. These are said to have relaxed their posture somewhat since a particularly tense period earlier this year.

Supporters of Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, the deposed President of Iran, seized Iran's diplomatic outpost here today in a one-hour takeover that ended with the shooting of one of the demonstrators. A spokesman for the District of Columbia police, William G. Jepson, said this afternoon that the demonstrator was shot in the back, apparently by one of the hostages in the building, moments after the group that occupied the mission stepped into a narrow corridor after deciding to surrender. The demonstrator, who was reported in critical condition by Georgetown University Hospital, refused to cooperate with the authorities or to identify himself. He was listed as John Doe.

President Reagan has decided to drop his plans to nominate William E. McCann, a New Jersey insurance executive, as Ambassador to Ireland, Administration officials said today. The President is now expected to nominate a prominent Republican lumbercompany executive from Oregon. The officials said that Mr. McCann, an Irish-American who was national chairman of the Reagan-Bush Pioneers in 1980, was being dropped because of links between his company and Louis C. Ostrer, a convicted stock swindler.

PEKING OPERA IN NEW YORK: Atop China's United Nations Mission are two members of Shanghai troupe that will begin a run of 15 performances at Alice Tully Hall next Wednesday. At right is Zhou Shaolin, the leading player; at left, Ku Ixuan. The group is the foremost of 2,800 Peking Opera companies in China.

Lane Kirkland, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., was asked earlier this week whether the American labor movement would suffer serious and perhaps permanent injury if the air traffic controllers' union was destroyed. ''The labor movement has been destroyed and destroyed and destroyed,'' Mr. Kirkland said, speaking the words slowly, as though for emphasis. ''Yet we survive. We fulfill a basic human need.'' Mr. Kirkland meant that in the history of the American labor movement, which dates to the earliest years of the Republic and has been a major force in American life for more than a century, labor has often been accused of being feckless, of losing its fire, of having leaders who are old and toothless.

Federal officials, saying they were firm in their resolve to rebuild the nation's air traffic control system, called in additional military personnel today to perform the work of striking controllers. The union appealed for support from other labor organizations in this country and abroad and received some favorable responses but none that seemed to have any material effect on the situation. The Federal Aviation Administration borrowed 150 additional controllers from the armed services, bringing to 521 the number of military controllers assigned temporarily to civilian installations. Union Still Wants Talks Members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, who walked off their jobs Monday in defiance of a law forbidding strikes by Federal employees, said that they were still interested in resuming contract negotiations. The Government has said it will not negotiate and has taken steps to dismiss the 12,000 union members participating in the walkout.

The nation's unemployment rate, running counter to forecasts of a slumping economy, fell to 7 percent in July, the lowest point since April 1980, the Labor Department reported today. Despite the downturn in the economy in the second quarter, total employment last month rose by 570,000, with most of the new jobs going to men, especially those 20 to 24 years old. The decline in the unemployment rate, from 7.3 percent in June, raised immediate questions about forecasts of a weak economy coming from both within and outside the Reagan Administration. Many economists had expected the July unemployment rate to remain unchanged or to rise slightly.

The Prince and Princess of Wales sailed in and moored off the western Greek island of Ithaca tonight for a 24-hour visit, the Ithaca port authorities said. The royal yacht Britannia was expected to cruise around the Greek islands for most of next week, British Navy sources said. It was reported to have dropped anchor about one mile off the Ionian Sea island at 8 P.M. local time.

The honeymoon visit by the Prince and Princess of Wales to Gibraltar last Saturday may hasten rather than delay a solution to the dispute over the Rock, which has bedeviled relations between Britain and Spain for decades. Prime Minister Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo said over the weekend that Spain, having made its anger clear by the cancellation of King Juan Carlos's plan to attend last Wednesday's royal wedding, was inclined to ''let the matter rest there.'' An official in the Spanish Foreign Office added that ''we have no desire to make this too melodramatic or to take it out of context.'' ''My guess,'' the official said, ''is that the next few weeks will see some interesting developments, and that negotiations on the future of Gibraltar will be resumed by September. If we both show imagination, some solution can be found.''

The Austrian Mission here is trying to cut back on overseas phone calls. So is the West German Mission. The French information office is going to be doing less entertaining, and a Japanese diplomat will probably take a shorter vacation. The measures are being taken because of the American dollar's rising value. For many foreigners, the dollar is costlier than it has been in nearly 10 years. That is a blessing for Americans traveling abroad. But for governments that have diplomatic, trade and cultural offices here, with budgets and salaries calculated in their national currencies, exchange rates are forcing some to tighten belts.