What was going on when I was born?

Retail sales in December rose only 0.4 percent after seasonal adjustment, the Commerce Department reported. Sales for the year were 9.3 percent higher, indicating little or no gain after allowing for inflation. The gain in December, when the recession apparently deepened, was less than November's 0.7 percent rise. (D1.) The Supreme Court, in a cable television case, ruled that communities risk Federal antitrust liability when they regulate economic activity without explicit orders to do so from the state. The Court said Boulder, Colo., could be sued by a cable company that contends the city's regulatory policies favor a competitor. (D1.)

President Franklin D. Roosevelt used a secret device to record news conferences in the Oval Office of the White House for 11 weeks during his 1940 re-election campaign, according to a history professor who has spent the last three years studying the recordings. Some private conversations were also recorded, apparently inadvertently. The recordings, which have been stored at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, N.Y., for more than 30 years, total about eight hours of material, most of it from the 14 press conferences held in the Oval Office between Aug. 23 and Nov. 8, 1940. In the recordings of private conversations, President Roosevelt commented on a wide range of subjects. He cited the American public's readiness ''to pull the trigger if the Japs do anything'' and complained on another occasion about the ''fascist'' propaganda techniques of Wendell L. Willkie, a Republican contender for the Presidency.

A picture accompanying an article Dec. 14, describing the final session of China's legislature, was incorrectly described as that of the army chief. It showed Peng Chong, a party secretary and member of the Politburo.

The Supreme Court ruled today that cities and towns risk liability under the Federal antitrust laws when they regulate economic activity in the absence of explicit direction from the state government. While the decision involved cable television, its implications extend to state-local relations in a much wider regulatory context. The 5-to-3 decision said that the city of Boulder, Colo., could be sued by a cable television company that charged that the city's regulatory policies were favoring a competing company and restraining trade in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Justices reversed a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, which found that the city's cable television policy was immune from antitrust challenge.

An article about a Harlem family in Metropolitan Report Monday incorrectly i dentified the law school that has a program to help tenants witho ut heat. It is the New York Law School, at 47 Worth Street in Man hattan.

The winter's first major snowstorm blew into the New York metropolitan area yesterday, paralyzing traffic, icing streets and causing accidents on the highways. Major delays were reported at airports and bus and railroad stations and on roads around the city. Many suburban schools and offices were shut early. For many commuters homeward journeys of an hour mushroomed into treks of five or six hours.

THEY are in the same business but their orbits rarely cross. He has jobs in Paris, Cleveland and Vienna. She is resuming an international career after six years devoted to motherhood. Their two children are in elementary school. Where to live? For the conductor Lorin Maazel and his wife, the pianist Israela Margalit, the current answer is a spacious Park Avenue apartment with his-and-hers grand pianos to go with their intercontinental his-andhers careers.

The United States signaled today that it was preparing to ask its Western allies and Japan for increased curbs on the shipment of high-technology products and oil and gas equipme nt tothe Soviet Un ion. Officials said the request was expected at talks in Paris next Tuesday to consider a unified stand on trade curbs. The Administration has apparently concluded that trade with the Soviet Union yields few benefits to the West A Polish official said it was difficult to say when military rule would be ended or detainees freed. Page A6. and has helped the Russians to improve their military capacity so that it is a threat to Western security. American interest in trade curbs has been given new impetus by the Polish crisis.

The nation's Big Three auto manufacturers reported today that domestic sales of new cars fell 20.3 percent in the first 10 days of January, continuing a downward trend that has prevailed since last September. Combined sales by General Motors, Ford and Chrysler in the period were 98,039 cars, down from 122,954 in the 1981 period. In the seven selling days of the Jan. 1-10 period, the five leading domestic auto makers sold 101,099 cars, or 14,443 cars a day, down from 128,237, or 16,030 daily, in the eight days of sales in the comparable period of 1981. On a seasonally adjusted annual basis, the industry was selling cars at a rate of 5.8 million, compared with 4.8 million in late December, and slightly above the 5 million range that had prevailed in recent months.

WHEN Woody Allen was planning his movie ''Interiors'' he wanted to create th e ambience of an interior designer's ultr@achic Southampton mansion. But after the first set was built he threw everything out. Although he could not explain exactly what he wanted, he felt it was all wrong, and he told the set designer, Melvin Bourne, to start over. What Mr. Bourne finally created for Mr. Allen was a spare but elegant interior using not Italian modern furniture nor 18th-century English antiques but the ''poor man's furniture'' of Britain - stripped pine.

It hit the bridge with a deafening roar and then, suddenly, there was silence. There was no sound at all, those who watched said later, as the Air Florida 737 jetliner glided onto the river, skidded across the gray ice and sank slowly into the icy waters. Behind it, a 10-wheel truck, its top sheared off, teetered on the bridge over the Potomac River. Half a dozen cars, their trunks and hoods crushed, were strewn across the roadway. And through a 35-foot gash in the bridge railing only a slender piece of the crushed airliner was visible.

An article in The Living Section yes- terday about a food book sale gave an incorrect address for the Corner Book Shop. It is at 102 Fourth Avenue, near 11th Street.