What was going on when I was born?

With Republicans almost evenly divided, the Democratic-dominated House gave President Reagan a hard-won victory today by adopting its first foreign aid appropriation bill in three years. The $11.4 billion measure was approved by a vote of 199 to 166. It had the support of 84 Republicans, while 87 voted against it. Sizable numbers of Republicans have usually voted against foreign aid as fruitless and wasteful, but many were won over this time by intensive lobbying by President Reagan, Secretary of State Alexander Haig Jr. and Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan. "You just can't discount this guy in the White House," representative Silvio O. Conte, Republican of massachusetts, said after the vote. "He wields a tremendous amount of power. These people all were massaged plenty."

The United Steelworkers of America was beaten overwhelmingly tonight in its second major effort to organize industrial workers predominantly in the South. The union, which was victorious in a similar effort last year, failed in a drive to organize thousands of employees of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, the nation's largest chemical manufacturer. Returns tabulated here by the regional office of the National Labor Relations Board showed that 11,500 employees at 14 Du Pont plants rejected steelworker representation by large margins. Under a labor board ruling sought by Du Pont, employees at each of the 14 plants, from Tennessee to New Jersey, voted on the question of steelworker representation only at their own locations. Union attorneys previously failed in an attempt to have the returns totaled. That would have given the steelworkers, who have long sought to organize Du Pont workers, a chance to organize all the affected plants or none.

Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. said today that, while Western Europe was entitled to its own view of Libya, the United States had decided that it could no longer carry on ''business as usual'' with a regime that practiced terrorism, ''especially when it is targeted on American officials.'' Faced with widespread European skepticism and opposition to the Reagan Administration's decision to ask Americans living in Libya to return home, Mr. Haig seemed to deviate from the official explanation for the American action by attributing it more to moral outrage than to the safety of Americans. ''Each nation is entitled to draw its own conclusions with respect to Libyan activity,'' he said, ''but for our part we no longer believe that a double standard with respect to international lawlessness and terrorism, especially when it is targeted on Amerian officials, is a contributor to international peace and stability and the rule of law which we all seek to espouse. And therefore we've taken these minor steps.''

The Security Council broke its long deadlock today and chose Javier Perez de Cuellar, a Peruvian diplomat, as the fifth Secretary General of the United Nations. His approval by the General Assembly next week is regarded as a formality. He would begin his five-year term Jan. 1. Mr. Perez de Cuellar, who is 61 years old, was an Under Secretary General for Special Political Affairs here until May, when he resigned to rejoin the Peruvian foreign service. He has also served as Peru's Ambassador to Moscow and headed his country's mission to the United Nations from 1971 to 1975.

The National Park Service plans to enlist individuals, businesses and private organizations in a multimillion-dollar project to restore about 30 crumbling buildings on Ellis Island, once the entry point for millions of American immigrants. In exchange for restoring the exteriors and refurbishing the interiors of structures that once served as dormitories, clinics, classrooms and auditoriums, private developers would be permitted to use the buildings as offices, shops, stores or other facilities judged by the Park Service to be tasteful and in keeping with the rest of the island and its history. According to Park Service officials, all of the graffiti and other writings, including poetry, left by immigrants on the walls of the buildings will be preserved. Proposals will be invited next week from those who want to acquire and develop buildings on the island. The Park Service said the proposals would be carefully reviewed, both for their appropriateness and for the ability of their sponsors to carry out the plans financially.

OPEC TRIMS PRICES; LIBYAN ASKS IN VAIN FOR ANTI-U.S. MOVES ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, Dec. 11 (By The Associated Press) - Faced with a worldwide oversupply of oil that seems likely to continue, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed today to shave some of its prices, although probably not by enough to lower the price of gasoline and heating oil in the United States. The latest OPEC decision contrasted sharply with the results of many of the group's traditional December meetings over the past eight years, when it decided on oil price increases that drove up the world's energy costs. No Action on Libyan Demand Sources close to the oil ministers, who as always met behind closed doors, said the group had also rejected a Libyan request to blacklist American oil companies whose personnel leave Libya in response to a request by President Reagan. Mr. Reagan urged the companies yesterday to withdraw their personnel promptly and he plans to invalidate American passports for travel to Libya. The ministers were said to have listened "politely," but took no action on Libya's demand that OPEC take unified steps against United States oil companies. Libya's oil minister, Abdussalam Mohammed Zagaar, was quoted as denouncing the United States for taking an "illegal and unfair" action. But Humberto Calderon Berti, Venezuela's oil minister, told reporters, "We consider this a political matter. It has to be dealt with through ministries of foreign affairs."

After 220 years of marching and a decade or so of controversy, the St. Patrick's Day parade is not going to be held on St. Patrick's Day. It will be held on the Sunday before. James J. Comerford, the retired Criminal Court judge who has run the parade for many years, said yesterday that the tradition of marching every March 17, which parade historians say began in 1762, will end in 1982. "I'm personally disappointed, but I'm concerned about the welfare of New York City," Mr. Comerford said in announcing the change. The parade will be held March 14 next year.

As the Solidarity leadership met in Gdansk to map strategy in its deteriorating relations with the authorities, the Government indicated tonight that it might press next week for an emergency law to curb advances won by the union. The independent union has already served notice that it will stage a 24-hour nationwide protest strike if the Government passes a law giving it extraordinary emergency powers. Other possible responses, including an open-ended national strike, are due to be discussed by the leadership Saturday or Sunday in Gdansk. The mood of militancy among Solidarity's leaders was apparent from the outset of today's meeting, which was held inside the meeting hall of the Lenin Shipyard, where the union signed a historic agreement with the Government on Aug. 31, 1980.

Andrei D. Sakharov sent a telegram to Moscow today telling the young woman on whose behalf he staged a 17-day hunger strike that he and his wife, Yelena G. Bonner, were recovering from their fast and were ''happy beyond words'' at the Kremlin's decision to let the young woman emigrate to the United States. The telegram included a prearranged code that the recipient, Yelizaveta Alekseyeva, said authenticated it as coming from Dr. Sakharov, the 60-year-old physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner who is a key figure in the human rights movement here. She said the key words - ''on the evening of the eighth we stopped drinking Borzhomi,'' a local variety of mineral water - had been agreed on before the fast in case the Soviet authorities tried to send false messages in the physicist's name.

Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany and Erich Honecker, the East German Communist Party leader, met in a hunting lodge near here today for the first fullscale talks between leaders of their countries in more than a decade. The conversations, involving five meetings over three days, are expected to produce little in the way of concrete developments. West German officials hoped, however, that the talks would improve relations, and both leaders have investments in the effect of the talks on domestic public opinion. Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Honecker seemed intent on providing a positive ambiance when the Chancellor's plane arrived at Schonefeld just outside East Berlin. Mr. Honecker, normally a dour man, grinned for photographers, and Mr. Schmidt joked, telling reporters to ''hurry up, we won't get any prettier.''

Britain today ruled out intervening in the constitutional fight by Canadian Indians over treaties made more than two centuries ago. Lord Carrington, the Foreign Secretary, said treaties between the Canadian Indians and Britain, dating back as far as 1763, were no longer a British responsibility. In an official paper on Britain's role in the Canadian constitutional wrangle, he said the treaty obligations became the Canadian Government's responsibility in 1931.

Eugene V. Rostow, the head of the American Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, sat in today on the fourth session of the Soviet-American talks on reducing intermediate-range nuclear arms in Europe and said later that the ''atmosphere is very good.'' Before making a speech about arms negotiations with the Soviet Union in general at the American International Club here, Mr. Rostow reported that the morning meeting had shown that the two delegations ''have begun their work seriously and are settling down with a minimum of procedural difficulty to the substance of the problem.''