What was going on when I was born?

THE Defense Language Institute, once considered a pioneer in the teaching of foreign languages, has been reviewed by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, and found deficient in management, priorities and performance. It has, the report said, spent 159 man-years and $4.2 million on efforts to improve the quality of its courses without producing the necessary basic teaching materials. According to testimony taken, ''staffing priorities were so erratic that realistic planning was meaningless.'' The review was initiated by Representative Leon E. Panetta, Democrat of California, who had been a member of the President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies.

Because of an editing error in an ar- ticle on the yacht Sea Cloud that ap- peared in the Travel section Sunday, a quotation from ''Two Years Before the Mast'' by Richard Henry Dana was changed slightly and incorpo- rated into the article without attribu- tion.

Paratroops and Royal Marines have battled to within 15 miles of Stanley, the main Argentine stronghold on the Falkland Islands, the Defense Ministry indicated tonight. The ministry said British troops were fighting Argentine forces in the hills west of Stanley. Brian Hanrahan of the BBC reported fighting in the area of Mount Kent, a steep 1,535-foot hill dominating both of the rough tracks leading to the capital. Reports of Second Landing It appeared from reports from correspondents on the Falklands that a combat group taking the northern route across East Falkland Island had linked up, probably early today, with another approaching Stanley along another route to the south.

FOSSIL hunters led by a Johns Hopkins University paleontologist have discovered foot bones of what they report is the oldest known true primate. The fossils, extracted from 50-million-year-old rocks in Wyoming, provide clear evidence of the earliest animal with a grasping big toe, considered by primatologists a definitive feature in the early evolution of modern primates, which include monkeys, apes and humans. The foot skeletons belonged to Cantius trigonodus, a species long extinct but not unlike the living lemurs and tarsiers. The animal was the size of a small house cat. It may have been, according to the new evidence, close to the common ancestor of all later, higher primates.

As Governor Carey enters his last six months in office, he and members of his administration have been taking many steps that are likely to influence the state government for years. One of the most important steps has placed Mr. Carey's top aide, Robert J. Morgado, in the position of influencing how hundreds of millions of dollars of housing money will be spent. Asked about his future role, Mr. Morgado said it ''potentially could be very important.'' But he said that changes in housing programs had been advocated ''on their own merits'' and were much needed. ''We were working on these changes long before there was any consideration of my role,'' he said. In the final months of the administration, Mr. Carey and Mr. Morgado are supporting a series of changes in state housing programs that enhance Mr. Morgado's role.

President Reagan announced today that the United States and the Soviet Union would open negotiations June 29 in Geneva on the ''limitation and reduction'' of strategic nuclear arms. Mr. Reagan also pledged that the United States would not undercut previous arms limitation agreements with Moscow ''so long as the Soviet Union shows equal restraint.'' The opening date for the arms talks was contained in a statement issued by both Governments today. ''Both sides attach great importance to these negotiations,'' the one-paragraph statement said.

Andy J. Spielman, vice president of the Waters Travel Service, which has operated here since the 1930's, has watched the travel agency business grow to become what he describes as ''the best system in the world.'' Now he and thousands of other travel agents worry that the Civil Aeronautics Board, after a three-year study of how their industry functions, may decide to deregulate it. If that happens, they fear the same sort of upheaval that accompanied deregulation of the trucking industry and the airline industry. The possibility of letting supermarkets, drugstores or banks sell airline tickets seems horrendous to some of the nation's 18,800 travel agents. Aside from airlines, they are now virtually the only ones selling tickets.

Western trade with the Soviet bloc is declining, after a decade of explosive growth. President Reagan would like to see the trend furthered and is expected to seek a number of trade limitations aimed at the Eastern bloc at this weekend's summit meeting. (Page A1.)

If the war between Iran and Iraq ended today, the wider battle for political and psychological domination of the Persian Gulf would be just beginning. This is the second time in the last three years that the balance of power in the Middle East has undergone a radical transformation. The first was in March 1979, when Egypt signed its peace treaty with Israel and effectively relinquished its role as leader of the Arab world. Since then the role of regional Moslem leader has been up for grabs. Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi President, made a play for the role, but it now seems clear that his reach exceeded his grasp.

''And how they must have wished, in all the ugliness that war brings, that no other generation of young men to follow would have to undergo that same experience.'' - President Reagan, remembering war dead. (A14:6.)

The Canadian Government tonight announced financial concessions to the depressed oil and gas industry in a bid to revive exploration and development activity. The tax reductions and credits are designed to increase revenue to the industry by $2 billion (Canadian) by 1986. But no concessions were made to American and other foreign companies that have complained both of discriminatory treatment and of a federal ''grab'' of their potential earnings. Energy Minister Marc Lalonde, reacting to universal complaints from oil and gas companies of drastically reduced cash flows since the National Energy Program was introduced in October l980, declared in a House of Commons speech that the plan ''is working on all fronts and will continue to work.''

THE experiments are simple: no injections or complex equipment, just a nasal spray and an ordinary nose-drop dispenser. Yet, over the last year, several hundred such experiments in England have demonstrated a tantalizing fact: that pure interferon, made artificially, can, under certain circumstances, protect humans against a single virus of the common cold. ''There is no doubt whatsoever that if you use interferon as a spray before the virus gets to you, you can prevent a cold,'' said Dr. David A.J. Tyrrell, director of the Medical Research Council's Common Cold Unit at Harvard Hospital in Salisbury, England. The experiments involved volunteers representing a broad cross-section of British people. Each received nine doses of interferon by nasal spray, then a common cold virus by droplet, then several more days of nine interferon doses each. ''It is virtually complete protection'' against the cold, said Dr. Tyrrell. ''We just haven't had a cold in the volunteers.'' And he considers the experiments particularly valuable in learning how to use interferon for people already ill with serious chronic diseases for whom a cold could be a health disaster.