What was going on when I was born?

International Two Argentine jets were shot down when they attacked a British warship off the Falklands, the Defense Ministry announced. Reports reaching London said that the two American-made A-4 Skyhawks had been escorting transport planes trying to run the British blockade when they were brought down in dense fog and clouds by missiles about 25 miles west of the islands. (Page A1, Column 6.) Foreign journalists were abducted or detained in Buenos Aires. One American journalist was said to be under detention, and two Norwegians were reported by Norwegian diplomats to have been put on separate planes and sent out of the country. (A1:5.) Military aid for El Salvador totaling $60 million was approved overwhelmingly by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The Reagan Administration's request was granted after a heated debate in which the panel struck down proposals to halt or limit the assistance.(A1:2.)

The House Foreign Affairs Committee today overwhelmingly approved the Reagan Administration's proposal for $60 million in military aid to El Salvador. Approval was by voice vote after heated debate and after the committee struck down a series of proposals to limit or halt military aid to the Salvadoran Government. Several Congressmen strongly criticized the opponents of military assistance, accusing them of trying to ''write off'' the Government and hand the country to the leftist guerrillas. But those who wanted to deny El Salvador aid argued that approving the measure would seem a signal of support for a ''repressive'' Government.

The authorities expelled three foreign journalists today and three others were abducted by unknown people and later released naked. Col. Bernardo Menendez, Deputy Minister of the Interior, said tonight that one American journalist and two Norwegians had been expelled for ''compromising national security.'' He declined in an interview to be more specific about the charges. The American, Holger Jensen of Newsweek magazine, was put on a flight tonight to Montevideo, Uruguay, with Ivar Hippe of Dagbladet, an Oslo daily. Frode Holst of the Oslo daily Verdens Gang was put on a plane earlier to Brazil.

Since its founding in 1919, the New School for Social Research has lived by its wits in Manhattan. Take the way Alvin Johnson, who founded the school in 1919, obtained the main building. Mr. Johnson approached Daniel Cranford Smith, a friend of the school who owned a string of three houses on West 12th Street, and proposed that in return for allowing the school to ''commandeer'' them, Mr. Smith and his wife be allowed to spend the rest of their days in a penthouse apartment with a lovely terrace. He argued that the Smiths, who frequently caught cold, would be healthier and ''live much longer'' at the higher elevation. The Smiths bought the argument and lived there for years. The New School bought the buildings, and the terrace is now an extension of the newly renovated office of John R. Everett, the president of the school.

Robert L. Vesco, the fugitive American financier, was briefly detained when he landed in Costa Rica this morning and then expelled from the country as ''an undesirable,'' a Costa Rican Government spokesman said. The spokesman said that Mr. Vesco, who lived in Costa Rica for six years in the 1970's, had flown to neighboring Nicaragua, but officials in Managua said it was ''totally false'' that he had arrived there. Mr. Vesco, 47 years old, faces charges in the United States of ''misappropriating'' more than $224 million from his mutual funds company, Investors Overseas Services, and of making illegal contributions to President Richard M. Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign. But United States requests for his extradition from both the Bahamas and Costa Rica in the early 1970's were turned down by local courts, and no new extradition attempt has been made in almost a decade.

An article yesterday about Harvard Law School incorrectly identified the institution with which it has jointly sponsored a Boston legal services pro- gram. It is Northeastern University School of Law.

From the hundreds of piles of neatly stacked steel pipe in steamy southern jungles to the skyscraper being built in Mexico City for Petroleos Mexicanos, the state petroleum monopoly, it is apparent that oil has become something of a king in this democratic nation of 70 million. ''We can't say it yet, but our large discoveries in the south may be linked in one giant field,'' said Manuel Sandoval, a spokesman for Pemex, as Petroleos Mexicanos is known. ''If that is true - wow, wow, wow.'' That is almost a matter of detail. There is no longer doubt that Mexico is an oil power of the first order with potential rivaling that of Saudi Arabia. Mexico now claims proved and probable hydrocarbon reserves of 150 billion barrels, indicating that it could export increasing amounts of oil for more than a century.

Retail sales, virtually stagnant since last spring, rose 1.4 percent in April with gains for cars, furniture and other durable goods, the Commerce Department reported today. Apart from a February increase of 2.7 percent, a figure that most analysts said was overstated, the April sales increase was the largest in any month since January 1981. Economists inside and outside the Government said they were encouraged by the report, but they stopped short of declaring that a national economic recovery had begun.

Led by United States Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan, finance ministers from 10 major industrial countries today rebuffed demands from less developed countries for a vast infusion of aid. Mr. Regan told reporters after the meeting of the so-called Group of 10 that the members had agreed on the need to reduce budget deficits, continue with tight-money policies and keep a tight rein on lending by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The ministers' meeting took place during the two-day session of the interim committee that guides the I.M.F.'s lending policies. The Group of 24, which lobbies for the third world on economic matters, urged Tuesday that the rich countries increase aid substantially and work to lower interest rates and raise government spending to help the world recover more quickly from recession.

''I am the cause of John's tragedy.'' - John W. Hinckley Sr. (A1:1.)

THESE days that man in the pin-striped suit behind the mahogany desk with the push-button phone could be your superintendent. No longer do all superintendents fit the traditional mold of men who push brooms and replace electrical outlets. The new breed, particularly those who function in the ever more expensive world of the urban high-rise, are no longer uniformed workers waxing lobby furniture and sweeping public foyers, but executives supervising substantial budgets and large staffs and earning $25,000 a year or more. They oversee the meticulous care of high-priced apartment houses - some of the cooperatives and condominiums sell for more than $1 million and rents go into the thousands - that line the Upper East Side and dot other areas of Manhattan. They are, in short, not ''supers.'' As a professional group they are unique to cities, indeed to certain city blocks, and their responsibilities range from the trivial to the almost awesome. Their universes are their buildings, so while they must perforce be involved in such mundane matters as ordering cleansing powders, mops and brooms, they may also act as professional diplomats and contractors and their skills must include personnel management. They are quite often ad hoc policemen, for security is one of their prime concerns. Smoothly working steam boilers, polished floors and furniture, and tidy laundry rooms please them.

The Rev. Billy Graham said here today, at the end of a visit to the Soviet Union, that he had seen no evidence of religious repression and that the churches he had visited were at least as full as those in his hometown, Charlotte, N.C. At a news conference, he also seemed to play down the arrest of a young woman who had unfurled a protest banner during an officially sanctioned Baptist service that he attended on Sunday. The banner said there were people in the Soviet Union who were being imprisoned for evangelistic activity. When asked by an American reporter whether he was making inquiries about the woman, the 63-year-old evangelist said he had only the reporter's word about the case, and added: ''Some people can be detained for all kinds of reasons. We detain people in the United States if we catch them doing something wrong. I have had people coming to my services in the United States and causing disturbances and they have been taken out by the police.''