What was going on when I was born?

International Israeli jets attacked missile positions of Syrians in Lebanon, reportedly destroying a number of sites along the Beirut-Damascus road. The attack followed Sunday's ambush of an Israeli bus in which six Israeli soldiers were killed and 22 were wounded, 11 seriously. (Page A1, Column 6.) Lebanon's Premier was asked to stay by President Amin Gemayel. The President, a Maronite Christian, had to choose a Sunni Moslem under rigid Lebanese tradition, and he decided to ask Shafik al-Wazzan to remain at the urging of Saeb Salam, the 77-year-old former Prime Minister, who is probably the most influential Moslem leader in Lebanon. (A1:5.)

You half expect the thing to take a jerky step on its gawky tubular steel legs and fire a laser blast vaporizing the neighbor's charcoal grill. The unearthly looking structure - a satellite earth station 12 feet in diameter with a rotating eight-foot tripod in the center - sits on a suburban lawn, near the swing, whirring as it moves left and right, up and down, searching the stars for Regis Philbin. The earth station, more commonly called a dish antenna, locates Mr. Philbin in geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the Equator on the Satcom F-3 satellite and draws him into the living room of the Burt Lerner family of Tenafly. Other residents of this tidy suburban neighborhood did not know what to make of it when the Lerners installed their television dish antenna about three months ago. Most of them treated it as a UFO come to roost. ''I don't know what it is,'' said one neighbor who telephoned the Lerners. ''But whatever it is, it moved.''

To a backdrop of skepticism, criticism and delays, a public timetable was installed in the New York City subway system yesterday. The timetable, showing a 24-hour schedule of train movements through a station, was posted at Cortlandt Street, a station beneath the World Trade Center. About 700 subway locations will have the timetables by the middle of 1984 at a cost of $2 million, according to the Transit Authority. ''Bet you any money, they're not going to be right,'' said Emanuel Blandina of Sussex County, N.J., as he rushed past workmen installing the new timetable. ''Instead of doing that, they should get the trains running right.''

Glenn Gould, the Canadian pianist who retired from a flourishing concert career in 1964 to become a recording artist best known for his Bach interpretations, died yesterday in Toronto General Hospital. Mr. Gould suffered a severe stroke last Monday, two days after his 50th birthday. He went into a coma Thursday and never regained consciousness. Mr. Gould was always an unorthodox pianist, choosing isolation over society, recordings over live concerts and idiosyncratic reinterpretations over respect for musical ''authenticity.'' He was best known to the public, perhaps, for his eccentricities - wearing gloves, scarf and overcoat in summer weather; soaking his hands in hot water before playing the piano and humming and singing while playing. But beyond his eccentricities, his legacy of nearly 80 CBS recordings is among the most significant and challenging musical documents of our time.

Not all top executives are eager to plunge into the high risk and excitement of a takeover battle. James H. Evans, chairman and chief executive officer of the Union Pacific Corporation, prefers a lowerkey approach to expansion. His company's forthcoming friendly merger with the Missouri Pacific and Western Pacific railroads is typical of the steady, methodical course that Union Pacific set for itself in the 1970's. Union Pacific management has always felt more comfortable avoiding hostile takeover situations. The company's only major previous acquisition was also a harmonious deal.

Not too long ago, thanks to Japan's buoyant exports and favorable balance of payments, the yen was one of the world's most favored currencies. But that time is over - the world recession has reached even super-efficient Japan. This country still has what is probably the world's most formidable industrial economy, and it is still a threat to the United States and Europe in steel and autos. But the yen is at a five-year low against the dollar and experts say its prospects for recovery are not good.

The Supreme Court agreed today to decide a tax case with important implications for the political rights of taxexempt organizations. Opening their 1982-83 term, the Justices agreed to decide whether Congress can constitutionally permit veterans' organizations to engage in lobbying while denying the same right to some 300,000 other charitable organizations that are eligible to receive taxdeductible contributions. The Federal appeals court here ruled last spring that the privileged status of veterans' organizations under the Internal Revenue Code violated the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws. The appeals court said that the Constitution required either that the veterans' groups lose their lobbying rights or that the same rights be extended to all nonprofit organizations that qualify as recipients of tax-deductible contributions.

TRANSPLANTS of several types of organs have surged dramatically in numbers in recent months. Survival rates have improved as well. Both trends are an apparent result of surgeons' greater ability to perform transplants and of new drug therapies to help prevent rejection of the transplanted organs. They signal a revived interest in an area of surgery that some surgeons had abandoned through much of the 1970's. In the first six months of this year, for instance, 56 heart transplants were done in the United States, compared with an average yearly total of 22 throughout the 1970's, according to figures compiled for a Federal heart transplantation study. In addition to heart transplants, there has been much interest in lung, pancreas and bone-marrow transplants, as well as the kidney and corneal transplants that have become established practice. The world's 50th lung transplant since 1963 was done on Sept. 25 at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx by a team headed by Dr. Frank J. Veith. The patient was 26-year-old Scott Wilson, whose own lungs were destroyed by a herbicide called paraquat. The early indications are that the technical aspects of the operation were highly successful, though it will be several weeks before the physicians know for certain whether the transplant will hold.

An article Saturday on Johnson & Johnson incorrectly identified the maker of Head and Shoulders shampoo. It is Procter & Gamble.

A midnight deadline for curbing the powers of bankruptcy judges was postponed by the Supreme Court. The Justices, by their intervention, kept the bankruptcy courts from sliding into a kind of legal limbo in which, some experts said, they might not have been able to function. Congress now has until Dec. 24 to meet the Court's objections to the scope of the powers it conferred on the judges in the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978. (Page D1.) The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether veterans' groups may engage in lobbying while the same right is denied to 300,000 other tax-exempt groups. The Court also agreed to decide whether the transfer of gas from a pipeline's production division to its transmission division is a ''first sale'' that triggers higher price ceilings. It left standing a decision giving a corporation the right to bring a Federal civil rights suit. And it also left standing a decision regarded as having given important legal protection to outside auditors who fail to detect management fraud. (D1.)

Chancellor Helmut Kohl said today that his new Government intended to pursue good relations with Communist Europe and that it wanted ''friendship and partnership, but not dependency'' in its ties with the United States. In forceful language at his first news conference since he was elected Chancellor Friday, Mr. Kohl appeared to go out of his way to stake out a West German foreign policy of considerable continuity with that of his predecessor, Helmut Schmidt. ''The Americans are our most important partners and allies - to put it simply,'' Mr. Kohl said, when asked whether ''new accents'' could be expected in West Germany's ties with the United States. ''Without the umbrella and protection of the United States, we wouldn't have the Federal Republic as it is today.''

Mayor Koch imposed a hiring freeze yesterday on all mayoral agencies, citing the local impact of what he called ''the national depression'' as well as the cost of the city's recent labor settlement with its nonuniformed workers. The freeze will last a minimum of 30 days, the Mayor said at a hastily called news conference, and is intended not so much to save money as to give him time to consider other ways to deal with a worsening city economy. ''We have to put on a freeze so as to give me the opportunity of picking and choosing from options to be given to me over the next 30 days,'' he explained. 'Anything You Can Think Of' Mr. Koch repeatedly refused to be specific about what those options might be. Pressed on the point, he said they could be ''anything you can think of.''