What was going on when I was born?

New York City's savings banks lost $337 million in the fourth quarter of 1981, bringing the total loss for the year to $1 billion, the State Banking Department reported yesterday. The record quarterly and annual losses indicate that a number of major savings banks among the city's 34 are in danger of failing. However, banking authorities stressed that there was no danger for depositors, who are insured for principal and interest by Federal insurance agencies. The losses also are expected to exert considerable pressure on the Reagan Administration and on Congress to adopt measures to help the nation's beleaguered savings banks and savings and loan associations.

A long-awaited report released today by the National Academy of Sciences asserts that marijuana smoking has certain undesirable short-term effects on behavior and the body. But it says reliable evidence is so scanty that it is impossible to draw any firm conclusions about potential long-term health hazards. The report was prepared by a special panel of health authorities formed by the academy's Institute of Medicine. The panel's chairman, Dr. Arnold S. Relman, editor of The New England Excerpts from report are on page 9. Journal of Medicine, said that ''what little we know for certain'' is cause for ''serious national concern.''

President Reagan, yielding to protests from civil rights groups for the second time in two weeks, has lost his choice for a post on the Civil Rights Commission, White House officials said today. An aide to Mr. Reagan said that the Rev. B. Sam Hart, a black minister from Philadelphia who owns a radio station there, had asked the White House Thursday to rescind his nomination after protests from civil rights organizations and from the two Republican Senators from Pennsylvania. After further discussions today, the aide said, it was agreed that the White House would accept his decision, and Mr. Reagan was informed. An announcement of Mr. Hart's decision is expected Saturday.

A large water main burst just below Times Square in midtown Manhattan last night, shutting off subway service for much of the West Side and causing hundreds of buildings to lose water pressure. The cascading water halted traffic for several blocks below 42d Street, between the Avenue of the Americas and Eighth Avenue, and disrupted it elsewhere in a wide area of midtown. Within two hours, water began freezing on streets and sidewalks, making walking perilous for homebound Friday-night theatergoers. Water Shoots Up 2 Feet The break occurred shortly before 9 P.M. at 40th Street and Seventh Avenue, sending water two feet into the air through pavement that had been broken by the force of the pipe's bursting. Water swirled down the streets and into subway tunnels, sometimes reaching the knees of people caught by it.

Reagan Administration officials have told members of Congress informally that they are favorably disposed to selling F-16 fighter planes and mobile antia@ircraft missiles to Jordan, but that no decision is likely before next November's Congressional elections. Congressional and Administration sources said today that the official reason for the delay in any decision was that Jordan was not expected to make a formal request either for the F-16's or the mobile Hawk missiles until later in the year. They also said it was expected to take a long time for Jordan to find the necessary financing. But privately, Administration officials said that because of the strong opposition from Israel and its American supporters, it made no sense to go ahead with either the planes or the mobile missiles in an election year. Congress has the ability to veto such sales by majority votes in both houses, and last year the Administration was barely able to win a vote for the sale of five Awacs radar surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia.

Republican and Conservative Party leaders yesterday ''suspended'' their endorsement of Bruce Caputo as a candidate for the United States Senate because statements he had made saying he had served in the armed forces were not true. The leaders said privately after the meeting that the move was designed to put pressure on the Westchester County Republican to step out of the race voluntarily. Serphin R. Maltese, the Conservative Party executive director, said that it was also designed to encourage other candidates to emerge. But George L. Clark Jr., the Republican state chairman, noted, ''I can't stop him from being a candidate for our nomination.''

For several months now, the 101 members of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company have felt like Ko-Ko, Pooh-Bah and Pish-Tush, who confide piteously in ''The Mikado'' how unpleasant it is To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, In a pestilential prison, with a life- long lock, Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block. On Saturday night, after 106 years as the authentic repository of the Gilbert and Sullivan tradition, touring Britain from Torquay to Inverness, touring the world from Sydney to New York, the company will go out of business. A matinee of ''H.M.S. Pinafore'' and an evening gala, and that will be it. No more Major General Stanleys, no more Little Buttercups, no more Lord Chancellors will strut the stage under the aegis of the D'Oyly Carte.

A mummified insect has been found with much of its soft tissues apparently intact after 40 million years, scientists at the University of California at Berkeley have reported. The specimen is so well preserved that elements within cells appear to be visible, they said. The find is by far the oldest to show structures within cells and the oldest in which much of the chemical makeup of the tissues may have been preserved, the scientists said. Usually, mummified tissues are only a few thousand years old. ''And even some in the thousands has not been preserved as well,'' said Dr. George O. Poinar, Jr., the principal scientist in the study of the fly preserved in amber.

West Germany's capital hardly runs the risk of being labeled a metropolis of hilarity or gay abandon. People file into the ministries and file out. A man who sticks a colored handkerchief in his breast pocket can pass as a charmer; another who wears a deerstalker's cap to work can assume that he is considered exotic. Bonn, a small, businesslike place, is at ease behaving in a small, businesslike way. The strain comes when Bonn is expected to leap out of character, to pirouette and wriggle. That pressure has been on for the last couple of weeks as official Bonn went through the carnival season, painting its face with amusement. For those who did not find a way to sneak out of town, Ash Wednesday can come as a relief; the faces -the politicians' eyes that will not obey their dutifully forced grins - can resume their normal mien. Parliament is out, having learned that it is pointless to try to get full working days from the local clerical help, who are involved, as is Rhineland custom, in carnival proceedings. For West German officials, it is a time of study trips - the yearly blossoming of interest in African affairs, in Caribbean trade quotas and Law of the Sea Conference questions to be investigated in places where the sea is warm and waveless.

A meeting scheduled for Saturday of five Central American heads of government has been indefinitely suspended, a Costa Rican Foreign Ministry spokesman said today.

The 1,500 workers at the major Catavi tin mine struck for 24 hours today for salary increases, spokesmen for the state-owned mining corpoation said. Workers at other tin mines also threatened to strike if the military Government did not meet their pay demands by April 3, the spokesmen added.

The poster on the front gate of the Christian Democratic Party headquarters downtown says, ''The First Peaceful Revolution in America,'' but the machine gun-bearing guards on either side of it, the tattoo of pockmarks across the green stucco facade and the sharpshooters peering out from behind sandbags on the roof tell a different story. El Salvador is trying to accomplish the feat of peaceably trying to change governments through the ballot box in an atmosphere fraught with revolutionary violence. The March 28 vote is to elect a constituent assembly that is to draft a constitution and pave the way for the election of a government, possibly next year. A number of candidates have already received death threats in a form that could only occur in a land where assassination has become so commonplace. They were mimeographed, with the name of the recipient penned in after the salutation.