What was going on when I was born?

More than 1,300 troops of the Palestine Liberation Army left west Beirut today and traveled the dusty road to Damascus in the first overland withdrawal. Armed Israeli soldiers dropped out of sight as the trucks passed the last Israeli checkpoint here. But Israeli officers dressed as tourists stood by the road and watched the Palestinians roll into Syrian-held territory. An additional 760 guerrillas of the Palestine Liberation Organization left today by sea for Tartus, Syria, making a total of more than 6,400 guerrillas and soldiers who have left west Beirut in the first week of the pullout. That is about half the troops estimated by the Israeli Army to have been trapped in west Beirut a week after the Israelis invaded Lebanon on June 6.

Three men were convicted last night of participating in a racketeering conspiracy that included murder, robbery, gambling and drug dealing, all uncovered by an F.B.I. agent who infiltrated ''the Bonanno family of La Cosa Nostra.'' Two other defendants were acquitted of the principal conspiracy charge, but one of the two was convicted of a related drug-selling charge. The convicted men embraced and congratulated their acquitted associate in an emotional scene after the verdict. The jury of six men and six women reached the verdict after 20 hours of deliberations over a three-day period at the end of the five-week trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

After the big Labor Day weekend, most of the country's family amusement parks will get ready to stow away their roller coasters and river rides for the winter. If 1982 has not been a disastrous year for theme parks, it has not been a good year, either. Rain, an unseasonable blizzard, the recession, the foreign-exchange rate and the World's Fair in Knoxville, Tenn., are all being given part of the blame. But some people in the industry say that the downturn may be more significant and that what has been an American institution for the last decade is in for its own rough ride. Attendance at Disneyland, in California, has slipped 6.5 percent since its fiscal year began last October. Disney World, in Florida, had a good July, but is still down 5 percent for the year. Great Adventure in New Jersey is off 12 percent, Hershey Park in Pennsylvania off 4 percent. A survey by the state of Florida shows a drop of 5 percent in visitors to attractions within that state.

Leroy Williams, the former Congressional page who said in March that he had had homosexual liaisons with lawmakers, said today that he had lied. ''These allegations are not true,'' the 18-year-old Mr. Williams said at a news conference. ''I have lied and I regret that. Words cannot express the remorse I feel.''

Senior officials said today that the Administration was prepared to remove sanctions against European companies supplying equipment to the Soviet natural gas pipeline if other means could be found to keep equivalent economic pressure on Moscow. The officials added that they were looking for Western Europeans to develop a combination of measures. These would include limiting export credits to the Soviet Union, tightening controls on technology transfers, withholding exports of other kinds of oil and gas equipment and canceling contracts for the second, parallel strand of the projected 3,700-mile pipeline to Western Europe. The goal of the measures would be to induce Moscow to lift or soften martial law curbs in Poland. The officials said that the Administration was prepared to pursue this aim in ways that would minimize further confrontations between the United States and its allies.

The Manville Corporation today rejected allegations that it was seeking a Federal ''bailout'' by asking a bankruptcy court for protection from its creditors. And it said the Government must bear a large part of the burden of settling thousands of lawsuits filed against the company for asbestos-related illnesses. Manville, the largest single asbestos producer in the world, filed the bankruptcy petition on Thursday because of what it called the prohibitive cost of contesting over 16,000 asbestos-related lawsuits. The effect of the filing is to suspend damage suits pending against the company from claimants who blame it for lung disease and cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.

AROUND THE WORLD; Pakistan and China Open Pass in the Himalayas ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 27 (Reuters) - China and Pakistan ignored an Indian protest today and formally opened to regular traffic a pass that links the two countries along the ancient silk route through the Himalayan Mountains.

The Government offered subsidies today to Mexican businesses along the 1,760-mile border with the United States and indicated it would try to limit sales of some basic goods to bargain-hunting Americans. An announcement late Thursday by the Department of Budget and Planning said only that ''export controls'' would be applied along the border, an apparent step to appease Mexican businessmen who say their stocks are being stripped from the shelves by Americans taking advantage of the nation's severe economic crisis.

Iraqi jets flew over Teheran, Qum, Ilam and other Iranian cities in a show of military power today but made no attacks. Iran said it repulsed the jets before they could carry out bombing missions.

AROUND THE WORLD; Soviet Official Granted Refugee Status in U.S. WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 (UPI) - The State Department said today that a Soviet delegate to a political science convention who was last seen two weeks ago at a shopping mall in Rio de Janeiro had been granted refugee status in the United States. The department said the Soviet official, Sevim Geraibekov, 32 years old, had left Brazil for ''a third country'' to await processing of his application for political asylum in the United States.

A Salvadoran leftist opposition leader says he and his associates are prepared to return home ''to work for a political settlement'' if access to the press and other freedoms are guaranteed. Ruben Zamora, general secretary of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, made the statement Thursday in an interview here. His front is a political group aligned with the Farbundo Marti guerrillas fighting in El Salvador.

The Hebrides are thronged with tourists this week. It is the peak of the European vacation season, and the islands off the western coast of Scotland draw throngs of visitors. Many come from London to see the caves on Staffa that inspired Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, or the isle of Skye, with its magical blend of mountains, sea and ever-changing light, or the Scotch whisky distilleries on Islay. It is a safe bet that few of the Englishmen - to say nothing of the Austrians, Frenchmen and West Germans whose cars help clog the roads - give much thought to how the locals manage to make a living in these barren, if picturesque, places.