What was going on when I was born?

For the second consecutive week, a $5 million jackpot was claimed yesterday in New York State's Lotto game by a single player. The latest winner also won another prize of $435, making the award the largest in the game's three-and-a-half-year history. The new multimillionaire, Gerry Schmitz, a 36-year-old customs broker from Manhattan, said he had parlayed a combination of his lucky number 13, plus his birthday, age, street address and part of his zip code to come up with the magic numbers that made him rich. The winning numbers were 4, 8, 13, 28, 34 and 36. Before last week's winner, only one other person had ever won the $5 million limit. Lottery officials said the chances of winning the jackpot were 1,919,190 to 1.

International The P.L.O. guerrilla evacuation plan may need another day before a final accord can be announced, officials involved in the negotiations said in Beirut. Prime Minister Shafik al-Wazzan indicated that the outstanding differences could be worked out by early Wednesday before a scheduled meeting of the Lebanese Cabinet, which is expected to formally set the withdrawal date and ask for French, American and Italian troops to oversea the evacuation. (Page A1, Col. 1.) A U.S. arms cutback to Taiwan pledged by the Reagan Administration was based on ''the full expectation'' that China would fulfill its promise to seek reunification with Taiwan by peaceful means, President Reagan said. (A1:4.)

For the past two years, interest rates have been like a rope knotted fast around the neck of the economy. In the last two weeks, however, this stubborn hitch has come unraveled as interest rates have dropped at increasing speed. With the sharp decline in short-term rates spilling over into the long-term market yesterday - a development that sent the Dow Jones industrial average on a record-sized, 38.81-point climb - the questions of the day were just why and how this knot should suddenly slip loose. The how and why have much to do with a Federal Reserve Board suddenly determined to bring rates down, with the Administration's evident push to cut the Federal deficit, and with a sudden, widespread perception that inflation's back has been broken, according to economists.

President Reagan's push for tax increases this year has shattered the business coalition that helped bring about the President's tax cuts in 1981 and is now pitting his natural allies against each other. Nothing has symbolized the split more than the break in the ranks of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. While the chamber, its president, Richard L. Lesher, and its executive board oppose the tax increase, the chamber's chairman, Paul Thayer of the LTV Corporation, supports the tax bill. Mr. Thayer drove another wedge into this split today when he sent the President a telegram saying that he had signatures from 31 of 61 chamber board members in support of the tax bill. Mr. Thayer contended last week, when he broke from the chamber position, that a majority of the board supported the President. Mr. Lesher disagreed and continued pushing the chamber's opposition in a news conference, in statements and on Capitol Hill.

air markets. When Montse Guillen, one of the best cooks in the Catalan region, was in New York recently, Pierre Franey and I invited her to prepare some dishes for us. She arrived carrying a net bag containing a stone mortar and pestle, a terra cotta casserole and assorted essentials for her recipes, including a few giant heads of garlic, pine nuts and a jug of Spanish olive oil. She detailed a menu that, she assured us, would be quintessentially Catalan. The heart turned out to be a magnificent meat dish built around lamb chops and accompanied by escalibada, an elaborate yet easily made side dish of vegetables - eggplant, onions and green peppers -baked whole and served hot or cold and cut into strips. The food was served with four sauces, the most famous of which in the traditional sense is a romescu, a pungent, rich, nut and garlic sauce with a slightly biting flavor and the color of terra cotta. The others were garlic mayonnaises, each of a different character - one plain, one with honey and one with apples.

Leaders of both parties in the House of Representatives estimated today that, while support was growing, they were still more than 50 votes short of passage of the $98.3 billion tax bill. This assessment came in the wake of appeals by President Reagan and House Democratic leaders for the measure's approval. Many members of Congress reported continuing opposition to the tax increases in letters and phone calls from their home districts. But the dramatic rally in the financial markets and endorsements from influential business groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers and Business Roundtable seemed to change the mood late this afternoon.

The Occidental Petroleum Corporation yesterday withdrew its $4 billion offer to buy the Cities Service Company, which Cities Service officials rejected on Monday evening, and said it was now considering whether to improve the offer or make one directly to Cities Service shareholders. On the New York Stock Exchange, where a steady flow of new developments crossed the ticker tape throughout the day, traders initially pushed up the price of Cities Service stock on a wave of enthusiasm, watched it decline after Occidental withdrew its offer and then pushed it ahead again on market sentiment that Occidental might make a new bid. The exchange halted trading in the stock just before 11:25 A.M., when Occidental withdrew, and again at 2:46 P.M. in anticipation of new developments. Stock Advances 4 3/8 Cities Service stock, which did not resume trading, ended the day at $37.625, ahead $4.375 from $33.25 last Friday, the last time it traded.

Ten thousand or more New Yorkers have been or will be telephoned this year and asked to spend as much as 30 minutes answering questions about issues and candidates as a dozen pollsters feel the voters' pulse for an unusually large number of statewide primaries and elections. The voters' telephone numbers will in most cases have been picked randomly by a computer without any advance knowledge whether they are even registered to vote, although at least one pollster uses random selections from voter lists. The pollsters, in turn, have been picked by candidates on the basis of recommendations from other politicians, past associations or even their prices. For example, President Reagan's personal pollster and former President Jimmy Carter's poll taker in the 1980 Presidential campaign are dueling with their polls and printouts in the New York gubernatorial race.

A Federal court jury found Joseph Paul Franklin not guilty tonight on charges of violating the civil rights of Vernon E. Jordan Jr., the former director of the National Urban League, by shooting him outside a Fort Wayne motel two years ago. Mr. Franklin raised his fingers in a victory sign and smiled broadly at the jury, which had deliberated for eight hours before announcing its verdict at 9:30 P.M. In his instructions to the jurors, all of whom were white, Federal District Judge Allen Sharp said they must decide not only whether the 32-year-old Mr. Franklin had shot Mr. Jordan but also whether he had done so in order to prevent Mr. Jordan from using the Marriott Inn in Fort Wayne. The judge said that because of the special nature of the 1968 Civil Rights Law, the jury had to decide whether Mr. Franklin had shot the Urban League director expressly because he is black. Already Serving Life in Prison The penalty on the Federal charge of violating Mr. Jordan's civil rights could have been 10 years in jail and a fine of $10,000. Mr. Franklin is already serving four life sentences on dual state and Federal charges for the sniper slayings of two black men who were jogging with white women in Salt Lake City.

New housing starts surged in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.2 million units, the highest level since April 1981, the Government reported today. The 33.7 percent increase from June's figures was the largest in the 23 years that records have been kept. Analysts welcomed the increase, but said it was mostly due to a push in Government-subsidized housing programs, which could not be expected to bring about a lasting recovery in the severely troubled housing industry.

Employee benefits that help defray costs of adoption and provide other assistance to adoptive parents are becoming increasingly popular with leading business concerns across the country. At the same time New York State has taken steps to balance inequities in the treatment of parents who adopt, and Federal legislation has been prepared that would exempt from taxes some of the financial reimbursement offered as company benefits to the parents of adopted children. As a comparatively recent development, there are reimbursements of adoption expenses, up to $2,500 in some companies, and/or leave of absence for female and, in some cases, male employees who adopt - in most instances whether single or married. Such policies were scarcely heard of a decade ago, and it is only in the last three or four years that the subject has been addressed with any intensity. The new direction is considered a logical progression that at once generates employee good will and is of minimal cost. Though the number of companies involved is still small, it has doubled in the past two years, and 50 percent of the increase has come about in the last seven months.

New York will try an experiment to stop 18 billion gallons a year of untreated sewage overflow from entering city waterways. The project is expected to be in operation by next spring. The experiment involves a simple system developed in Sweden, and it would be the first time it was used in this country. ''If this works,'' said a spokesman for the city's Department of Environmental Protection, ''we would have come up with a cheap, efficient way of treating nearly all of the sewage that goes into the waterways. It could mean the opening of beaches and recreational facilities in areas like Jamaica Bay where you can't swim now.''