What was going on when I was born?

Two Cabinet officers urged President Reagan to apply less severe sanctions against John Brown P.L.C. of Britain than were applied last week against two French companies for violating the Soviet pipeline embargo. The two officials, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige, were said to be seeking to contain mounting trade tension with Europe. (Page A1.) The United States and its European allies are viewed as having reached a political and legal impasse. (D1.) Western central banks will lend Mexico $1.85 billion in an effort to keep the financially troubled, oil-exporting country from going bankrupt. Officials said the coordinated international bailout effort will set an important precedent. Details of the loan were made final over the weekend in Basel, Switzerland. (D5.)

International Yasir Arafat left Beirut aboard a Greek ship, vowing to fight again. As the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization was sailing, more than 2,000 troops of the Syrian army also began leaving the city. The Syrians have occupied Beirut since 1976. (Page A1, Column 6.) Israel is concerned over the leftists who remain in Beirut in possession of the heavy weapons left behind by the departing Palestinians. Officials in Jerusalem said that members of the Moslem leftist group clashed Sunday with Lebanese army units. (A8:3-6.)

Of all the areas affected by the new tax bill, probably none will see more dramatic changes than private pension plans. The bill will curtail the ability of doctors, lawyers and other highly paid individuals to set aside large tax-deductible sums for retirement. It will also require many companies, particularly small ones, to shift benefits from their more highly paid employees to low- and moderate-income employees, an effort by Congress to insure greater private pension coverage for more workers in return for the taxdeductible pension benefits given to higher-income individuals. Some pension consultants predict that owners of small companies may choose to close down their pension plans rather than increase the benefits for employees. Employees who lose their pension coverage would be more dependent on Social Security and on their own savings when they retire. For many employees, however, there will be little, if any, change. Called Remedies for Abuses To some tax experts, the changes in the new tax bill are simply overdue remedies for abuses in the pension area as well as an effort to rein in the deductions allowed high-income individuals for retirement savings.

equipment company in Portland, Ore., often turns to a nearby personal computer for help in studying the American productivity problem. William G. Evans, president of a division of TRW Inc. that makes oil production pumps, and Gary Ginter, partner in a small Chicago concern that buys and sells more than $20 million daily in securities in financial futures markets, prefer late night or early morning sessions for thinking and conversing electronically about similar issues. They are three of 16 senior managers in business, government and higher education who are engaged, along with eight professors, in what they regard as a promising experiment in executive education designed by the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute here, 10 miles north of San Diego. These senior managers say they are finding a way to help overcome the difficulty of obtaining or keeping up with important general or technical information.

It was hours before dawn when the wailing and howling of nearby hyenas brought human sleep to a premature end. As the African sky lightened, the cause for the commotion among these carnivores of undeserved ill repute became obvious. During the night, the hyenas had captured and devoured a wildebeest, a cattle-sized herbivore that is their most frequent meal. By daybreak, all that was left of the unfortunate prey were horns and hoofs. As the sun rose, two jackals and a dozen vultures moved in to pick up scattered scraps of meat as the hyenas wandered off, replete - but some of them, notably the dominant females, more replete than others. Laurence Frank, the graduate student in zoology whose ''study animals'' made the kill, is here because of his interest in the social interactions of the female-dominated spotted hyena clan (other species, the brown and striped hyenas for example, have male-dominated arrangements). Mr. Frank, who is pursuing his Ph.D. degree at the University of California at Berkeley, believes his research will ultimately help to sort out such important human questions as the basic differences between male and female behavior and the effects of hormones on behavior.

Ten months ago the president and four other officials of Nassau Community College were indicted on corruption charges. Today the institution, the state's largest twoyear college, has a new president faced with an increasing enrollment, the prospect of an older student body and a need to form long-range plans. The new president, Dr. Sean A. Fanelli, says his top priority is to establish ''clearer lines of communication and accountability'' among administrators, professors and students. ''It's not my thought to go in and sweep the institution clean beause that would be more damaging than anything,'' he said in a recent interview. ''There is a tremendous amount of talent here, and what I have to do is direct it.''

When Agriculture Secretary John R. Block invited Deputy Treasury Secretary R.T. McNamar for a jog on Aug. 14, the farm chief had no idea that the run would cost the Commodity Credit Corporation $1 billion in loan guarantees. Part of what later became nearly a $10 billion aid package for Mexico was wrapped up by the two joggers as they passed Fletcher's Boat House on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal towpath that hot Saturday morning. Today, some further aspects of that Treasury-inspired package were disclosed, with an announcement from the Federal Reserve Board that central banks of the leading industrial countries will provide Mexico with $1.85 billion of short-term credits. The day before the billion-dollar jog, Mr. McNamar and other key United States officials had been meeting with Mexico's Finance Minister, Jesus Silva Herzog. Mr. Silva Herzog had flown to Washington the night before to report that his country's currency holdings were insufficient to cover even a month's imports.

''We all believe in informed consent, but it's not the art of medicine to scare people to death.'' - Dr. James L. Breen, president-elect of the obstretricians' and gynecologists' association. (A12:1)

The Continental Illinois National Bank of Chicago, the nation's sixth largest, said yesterday that it had dismissed one executive, stripped another of his responsibility for a large department and accepted several resignations as a result of the bank's earlier dealings with the failed Penn Square Bank of Oklahoma City. Continental had purchased more than $1 billion in loans from Penn Square, which was shut by banking regulators on July 5. In the second quarter, Continental charged more than $200 million in Penn Square loans against its loan-loss reserves and took an after-tax loss of $61 million for the period. The bank said yesterday that John R. Lytle, a vice president who had been in charge of the Continental division that worked most closely with Penn Square, had been dismissed.

SWEDEN is planning to dismantle, piece by piece, all 12 of its nuclear power plants by 2010 and is taking steps to bury the radioactive waste from them deep in granite at sea. France, on the other hand, expects to have 55 nuclear power plants generating 55 percent of its electricity within three years. It too has enormous waste disposal problems and is looking into the possibility of storing the radioactive waste under the Alps. These two approaches are among a wide range of West European strategies for dealing with the radioactive waste produced in generating nuclear power, strategies that must take into account the possibility that dangerous conditions could develop at waste-disposal sites thousands or millions of years hence. The future of nuclear power depends on safe disposal at a reasonable cost. Thus the West European experience -diverse, innovative and laden with political, physical and practical problems -will be instructive to other nations.

Yasir Arafat, whose Palestine Liberation Organization began concentrating its power here 12 years ago, left the city today by ship, vowing to fight again. At the same time, troops of the Syrian Army, which has occupied Beirut since 1976, also began leaving. The Syrians, who first entered the city to protect right-wing Lebanese Christians during their civil war against Palestinians and Moslem leftists, had become the Palestinian guerrillas' major ally against Israel. The Syrian departure today, according to the Israeli military spokesman here, made it likely that the entire withdrawal of Palestinian guerrillas and Syrian soldiers could end as early as Wednesday, three days sooner than had been expected.

The Martin Marietta Corporation, the target of an unwelcome $1.5 billion takeover bid from the Detroit-based Bendix Corporation, said late yesterday that it would try to acquire Bendix in a transaction valued at close to $1.8 billion. Martin Marietta, based in Bethesda, Md., said the counteroffer was aimed at thwarting Bendix's overture, made last Wednesday. The Bendix offer, for $43 a share, totaling about $1.5 billion, caught Martin Marietta by surprise. ''If these two corporations are going to be combined, the interests of the shareholders will be best served by combining the two corporations on the terms contemplated by the Martin Marietta offer, rather than the Bendix offer,'' Thomas G. Pownall, Martin Marietta's president and chief executive officer, said in a statement issued after an all-day meeting of the company's directors in Manhattan.