What was going on when I was born?

The Government's Producer Price Index for finished goods, a rough measure of the level of inflation consumers will face in the future, edged up by only four-tenths of 1 percent in July, despite a large increase in the price of food, the Labor Department reported today. This was a slightly better outcome than many economists had expected, and appeared to extend the gains that the United States has made against inflation during the last year. In another report, the Federal Reserve Board said that the nation's factories and mines increased their production by threetenths of 1 percent last month. The rise, much of which was attributed to a rebound in coal output after the miners' strike, came despite forecasts that the American economy was entering a recession. (Page 29.)

A Federal administrative law judge recommended today that the air traffic controllers' union be stripped of its right to bargain on behalf of the controllers. He said the union's 12-day-old strike was an ''open and flagrant'' violation of Federal law. John H. Fenton, chief administrative law judge of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, urged the agency, which oversees labormanagement relations in the Federal Government, to revoke the union's ''exclusive recognition status.'' That recommendation, if accepted by the full three-member board, would immediately end the union's right to represent more than 17,000 air traffic controllers in contract negotiations, grievance procedures and various appeals. It would, in short, deprive the union of its reason for being.

The Bolivian Government is apparently suffering a severe shortage of cash, having issued $10 million in checks in the past four weeks that foreign banks have refused to honor, according to private bankers and Government officials. Guido Salinas Vasquez, president of the central bank, said that the checks had bounced because foreign banks, mostly American, had ''suspended advances'' on lines of credit. (Some banks in New York that deal with Bolivia denied this.) And Mr. Salinas expressed the hope in an interview today that the International Monetary Fund would approve a desperately needed standby credit.

Prostitution in New York City has reached beyond such areas as Times Square into residential neighborhoods of working families with children, professional couples and older retired couples. In most areas, law-enforcement officials say, the criminal-justice system has proved virtually helpless to deal with the prostitutes and pimps who, accompanied by bodyguards and lookouts, use whole streets as their places of business. ''It's just out of hand here,'' said Nancy Schuln, president of the Boerum Hill Community Association in Brooklyn. ''You just can't believe it unless you see it. Lookouts roaming around, prostitutes having sex on stoops and in parked cars, women out in the middle of the street in their underwear.''

A patrol boat sold to Iran by France was hijacked off the coast of Spain yesterday as an Iranian crew was sailing it to its new home port. An Iranian monarchist group based here took responsibility. The 150-foot gunboat was one of three cleared for shipment 12 days ago by the French Government after President Francois Mitterrand lifted a two-year embargo that was imposed during the American hostage crisis. The gunboat was commandeered in the Bay of Cadiz, just off the port city of Cadiz. However, details of the incident remained unclear, with the monarchist group asserting that two gunboats had been seized.

Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. plans to see President Reagan Sunday to argue against Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger's plan for mounting the new MX missiles on aircraft, Administration officials said today. The officials said that Mr. Haig regards the forthcoming decision by Mr. Reagan on new missile deployment as crucial, not only for American defenses, but for maintaining allied unity. He is reportedly prepared to argue that, in addition to military and economic considerations, abandonment of the land-based MX plan would create additional political pressures in Western Europe against the deployment of American medium-range nuclear missiles there. Mr. Haig is expected to meet with President Reagan privately at his ranch near Santa Barbara, Calif. Mr. Reagan, Mr. Haig, Mr. Weinberger and other senior national security and political advisers will meet on Monday, and perhaps Tuesday as well, in Los Angeles to go over pending military decisions and other issues.

With appeals for moderation from the leader of the Solidarity labor union and the Roman Catholic Church, Poland today marked the anniversary of the Gdansk shipyard strike that gave birth to the independent union. Standing atop the big iron gates at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk, Lech Walesa, the union's leader, told a friendly crowd that it was time for the union to consolidate its gains of the last momentous year. ''Let the Government govern the country, and we will govern ourselves in the factories,'' he said, denying recent accusations from the Communist Party that Solidarity aspires to supplant it. Looks to 'Concrete Benefits' ''I feel we should start to fulfill what is in our power and what we have taken from the Government,'' Mr. Walesa said. ''Then we will know that the struggle has brought concrete benefits.''

The South Korean Government announced the release today of more than 1,000 prisoners, mostly common criminals and juvenile offenders, in an amnesty to mark the 36th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japan in 1945. ''Those who repent and are judged capable of taking part in shaping the new era'' under President Chun Doo Hwan were being progressively released from prison in amnesties, an official statement said. Those benefiting from this third amnesty in 1981 include 834 prisoners released on parole after sentencing on charges ranging from murder to robbery, 158 juveniles and 72 mainly political offenders, the Government said.

For generations, Brazil has resisted the worldwide drive for family planning. But now the urgency has become so compelling in the world's largest Roman Catholic country that even the church has found a way to join in. In this community in the poor northeastern region, priests are working with members of a Government social-action group to teach women about ''natural'' methods of avoiding pregnancy. The Bom Jardim project was designed as a model for the rest of the country.

Pope John Paul II, declared ''clinically recovered'' by his doctors, walked out of the hospital today three months after being seriously wounded in an assassination attempt. He was driven to the Vatican and immediately went to pray in the grottoes beneath St. Peter's Basilica at what Roman Catholics revere as the tomb of St. Peter and at the tombs of John Paul's three predecessors, John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul I. ''I wanted first of all to thank St. Peter for wishing to keep alive his latest successor,'' the Pope said, according to the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Romeo Panciroli. ''I thought there might have been one more tomb.''

President Nicolae Ceausescu of Rumania discussed agricultural cooperation and other international issues with a United States Congressional delegation today in Bucharest, the Rumanian press agency Agerpres reported. It said the Rumanian leader and members of the House Agriculture Committee had stressed the importance of developing agriculture, especially in the third world.

There was drought in Nigeria in the early 1970's and it decimated the peanut crop. Then the rains came, but the crop did not grow properly because of disease. Before that, there had been civil war, when easterners tried to secede and were beaten. The fighting hit the palm oil plantations. When the battles had ended, the palms had grown wild and were too tall to crop.