What was going on when I was born?

Paul J. Curran, formerly a United States Attorney and chairman of the State Investigation Commission, said yesterday that he would run for Governor of New York. He said none of the three other Republican candidates had built up commanding support. ''I'm going,'' he said, and he predicted he would get the 25 percent vote at the state convention that would give him a place on the ballot in the September primary. ''Personally, I've always been very impressed with Paul Curran,'' said George L. Clark Jr., the Republican state chairman, but he noted that the three other candidates had a big head start. He said his count had shown a bit less than half the convention votes committed to James L. Emery, the Assembly minority leader; Lewis E. Lehrman, a businessman, and Richard M. Rosenbaum, the party's former state chairman.

As Shotaro Uchiyma sees it, a truly global company ought to be run from New York City - the financial and information capital of the world, he says. So the 66-year-old president of the Fujitec Company, the fourthlargest elevator maker in Japan, is moving his company's worldwide headquarters to 450 Park Avenue. Mr. Uchiyama is also fond of Ohio. Next month, construction will begin on a $50 million elevator plant in Lebanon, Ohio. When completed at the end of 1984, it will be the largest elevator factory in the world, Mr. Uchiyama said during an interview at the corporate offices in this city outside Osaka.

A new birth control pill which women could take for four days at the end of each monthly cycle, instead of for three weeks as at present, has been devised by a leading French biochemist. Prof. Etienne-Emile Baulieu announced his device, and the results of preliminary tests, in his speech of induction today to France's highest scientific body, the Academy of Sciences. Although Dr. Baulieu's work has been closely held, word of it has begun to arouse interest among several leading specialists in the United States and elsewhere. Dr. Baulieu's invention is a steroid whose effect, he says, is to jam the protein ''receptor'' through which the cells of the uterus are able to absorb progesterone. Progesterone prepares the uterine cells to accept, lodge and sustain the fertilized ovum.

In all states, for the first time, more than half of those over 25 years old have completed at least four years of high school. The number of foreign-born Americans has increased sharply after declining since 1920, and one of every 10 people reported speaking a language other than English at home. Use of public transportation declined even as the price of gasoline increased dramatically, and at the decade's end almost as many Americans walked to work as used public transit. Findings From 1980 Census These are among the rapid changes in American characteristics in the 1970's, as shown by the 1980 census. The Census Bureau made public today a summary of its findings from the long form, which one in five Americans filled out.

WHEN Morris Dickstein, a member of the English department at Queens College, decided to offer a course about the 1960's, he thought it would be a mistake to treat the heat and fervor of the decade only through its literature without giving equal attention to its sociological significance. Therefore Dr. Dickstein will teach the course together with a sociologist, Alan Wolfe, and the two professors will have lighter schedules next fall so they can jointly plan the course and then give it together in the spring. Such ventures across disciplinary lines, as logical as they may seem, are still isolated efforts at many colleges and universities, where knowledge is often narrowly segmented into academic departments. There are signs, though, that the fragmentation of knowledge may not be permanent. More and more, interdisciplinary courses are being systematically developed with institutional support, as is happening at Queens College, part of the City University of New York.

A chart in Metropolitan Report on April 5 showing New York City's cost for wages and benefits of employees in 10 major jobs included several inac- curacies.

SPECIALISTS By BAYARD WEBSTER NOW as the first stage of warm weather allergy sets in, with sufferers beginning to be troubled by irritated eyes and noses, the source of that irritation is no mystery: it's tree pollen. An apparently similar allergy has long mystified specialists who have seen a sudden rise in hospital emergency treatments for asthma late every fall, well after goldenrod and ragweed have died out. The puzzle here, too, may have just been solved: it seems to be mushrooms. A recent scientific study reveals that the spores of mushrooms released into the atmosphere after the ragweed season were the probable cause for a substantial portion of fall asthma and the puzzling phenomenon called ''October hay fever.''

Warning that ''war in the South Atlantic would be the greatest of tragedies and that time is indeed running out,'' Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. flew to Washington from Buenos Aires tonight after talks on the Falkland Islands crisis. ''After more than three days of very detailed talks there has been a further identification and refinement of the Argentine position,'' Mr. Haig said in a statement read on a rain-swept tarmac at Ezeiza International Airport. ''I am making the results available to the British Government, and I am returning to Washington to report to the President.'' According to Argentine officials and Western diplomats, President Leopoldo Galtieri and the ruling junta offered Mr. Haig a plan for the withdrawal of Argentine troops from the Falklands Islands, seized from Britain on April 2, and joint Argentine-British administration. But they insisted that after six months of negotiations the archipelago would have to come under full Argentine sovereignty.

A special Federal court declared yesterday that it would appoint someone to develop reapportionment plans for New York State's Senate, Assembly and Congressional districts because the State Legislature had failed to adopt the necessary plans. The three-judge panel, which was convened in Federal District Court in Manhattan, said it would appoint ''a special master or special masters'' to provide the court-ordered reapportionment plans by June 7. It did not indicate who would be appointed for the troublesome task. In issuing its ruling, the court directed state officials to continue their political negotiations to work out the reapportionment plans. If the state adopts a plan before the court does, it said, the state-adopted plan would be submitted to the Justice Department for approval.

Ending months of uncertainty, the Supreme Court announced today that it would decide, after all, whether racially discriminatory private schools are entitled to Federal tax exemptions. The Justices appointed William T. Coleman Jr., a prominent Washington lawyer, to argue the legal position that the Reagan Administration abandoned early this year: that the Internal Revenue Code permits the Government to deny tax-exempt status to schools that discriminate on the basis of race. Mr. Coleman, who was a cabinet member in the Ford Administration, will argue as a ''friend of the Court'' when the Justices hear the two related cases next fall. While the Supreme Court often appoints lawyers to represent indigent parties, today's action was highly unusual, necessitated not by poverty but by the refusal of one party, the Federal Government, to defend the victory it had won in the lower courts. The Justice Department itself had suggested that the Court appoint someone to present its previous position.

The United States announced new restrictions today that will have the effect of banning tourist and business travel to Cuba after May 15. Only official travel, trips by news reporters or academic researchers and travel for family reunification will be allowed under the new restrictions, which will cover United States citizens and citizens of other countries attempting to travel to Cuba from American territory, the Government declared. Other curbs are being weighed, officials said. John M. Walker, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Enforcement and Operations, announced the move today, calling it ''an important part of this Government's policy of tightening the current trade and financial embargo against Cuba.'' He said it was ''designed to reduce Cuba's hard currency earnings from travel.''

New York City and the leadership of the sanitation workers' union announced an agreement yesterday to replace all three-man sanitation crews with two-man crews. They would work on trucks that now use three men, as well as trucks that were specifically designed for reduced crews. The agreement capped months of negotiations and is subject to ratification by the full membership of the Uniformed Sanitationmen's Association. Officials of the Koch administration said the agreement would be phased in gradually over at least a year, and should lead to productivity gains estimated at $18.3 million a year.