What was going on when I was born?

''I look forward to conducting relations with the new leadership in the Soviet Union with the aim of expanding areas where our two nations can cooperate to mutual advantage.'' -President Reagan. (A1:3.)

The space shuttle Columbia returned to orbit today, and in its inaugural mission as a space freighter, successfully released the first of two satellites it was hauling for the program's initial paying customers. Four astronauts, the largest crew ever, rode the winged spacecraft into an 184-mile-high orbit. On their sixth revolution of the earth, they ejected a 7,200-pound business communications satellite from the rear of the open cargo bay. The satellite drifted away, fired its own rocket and then climbed toward a higher orbit.

For the past half-century, orange-roofed Howard Johnson's has been a fixture of the American highway, an inevitable stop for the American family on vacation. Times have changed, but the Howard Johnson's chain has not - and that, industry analysts and competitors say, is the source of the problems afflicting the 57-year-old restaurant and lodging company. ''The Howard Johnson concept, the orange roof on the highway, is dead,'' said Charles Bernstein, editor of Nation's Restaurant News. ''It's a chain that's riddled with problems. It's going to take time to turn this around.''

The Federal Railway Administration announced yesterday that every train on Conrail's New Haven line must stop every 30 miles so that each wheel of the train can be inspected. In addition, trains will not be permitted to go faster than 55 miles an hour. The restrictions, which went into effect yesterday, will force delays of up to 30 minutes in each direction on the line, which carries 40,000 commuters a day. The measures will be in effect for 11 months while faulty axles are replaced. Commuters on Conrail's Harlem and Hudson lines will not be affected.

Stock prices shook off early selling pressure yesterday that was touched off by news of the death of Leonid I. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, and then staged a strong rally in the final half-hour of trading. Brokerage stocks were particularly strong. The Dow Jones industrial average finished at 1,054.73, up 10.21 points. At 3:30 P. M., it had been down by more than 4 points. The announcement of Mr. Brezhnev's death came shortly after midnight Wednesday. At 10:30 A. M. yesterday, the Dow industrials were off nearly 9 points.

Trying again to win a larger portion of pay television's growing revenues, some of Hollywood's largest studios announced plans yesterday to become partners in an all-movie pay-television network. The studios - Paramount Pictures, MCA Inc. and Warner Brothers - agreed to buy equal shares in the Movie Channel, a 24-hour cable network that reaches more than two million subscribers. The network is owned by Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment, a 50-50 venture of American Express and Warner Communications, the parent of Warner Brothers. Under the agreement, the three movie studios will be equal partners in the network, while American Express will hold a smaller share, which has not been specified yet. Each of the studios is expected to pay about $25 million for its share of the service, according to a studio executive involved in the negotiations.

President Reagan pledged tonight that his Administration would work with the new leadership in the Soviet Union to improve Soviet-American relations after the death of Leonid I. Brezhnev. Mr. Reagan's pledge, made in a televised news conference, repeated sentiments in a condolence letter that Mr. Reagan sent to the Soviet leadership earlier in the day. In the two-paragraph letter to Vasily V. Kuznetsov, the First Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Mr. Reagan said, ''I look forward to conducting relations with the new leadership in the Soviet Union with the aim of expanding areas where our two nations can cooperate to mutual advantage.'' 'A Tremendous Responsibility' At his news conference, Mr. Reagan said both the Soviet Union and the United States bore ''a tremendous responsibility for peace in a dangerous time, a responsibility we don't take lightly.'' He cited his Administration's initiatives for reducing nuclear and conventional forces, and added, ''I want to reconfirm that we will continue to pursue every avenue for progress in this area.''

President Reagan said tonight that he was seriously considering a gasoline-tax increase to finance road and bridge repairs that would create an estimated 300,000 jobs. At the same time, the President, facing record budget deficits, said he was ''looking if there are savings'' to be made in military spending, a budget priority he had previously defended as virtually untouchable. Speaking at a televised news conference, Mr. Reagan argued that his Administration's $5.5 billion road-repair proposal would not violate his previously stated opposition to tax increases and public works programs. ''It would be a user fee,'' Mr. Reagan contended, adding that the country had an urgent need for road and mass-transit repairs.

SAY Egyptian to most dancegoers and they'll think of belly dancing. But the Festival of the Nile troupe may widen a few horizons tonight at the Lehman College Center for the Performing Arts in the Bronx and on Sunday at Carnegie Hall, part of its first North American tour that ends next week in Washington. The program, performed by leading members of the Egyptian-Government-sponsored Samer Theater for the Folk Arts in Cairo, represents cultural traditions as varied as Egypt itself, with its fertile Nile Valley and Delta, its interior lakes and the coastal regions on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, its arid deserts and lush oases. If Sinai and the Suez Canal zone have overtones of contemporary history, Nubia in the far south suggests romance. And Egypt's nearly 50 centuries of history incorporate the influences of Pharaohs and Christian Coptics, of Islam and those who passed through, from the citizens of ancient Hyksos to the French and British of recent years.

IN the 1920's in New York, some of them were still around. They talked familiarly among themselves of places small boys had only read about in history books: Vicksburg, Cold Harbor, Gettysburg and, with lowered voices, a terrible place called the Wilderness. In their cups they would mention ''Lyss'' and ''Cump,'' nicknames for Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. They never called it the Civil War; they called it the War of the Rebellion. Each year on Memorial Day they would turn out, against the strident advice of sons and daughters, to march up Riverside Drive in facsimiles of the grotesque uniforms in which they had gone to war. Some in baggy Zouave trousers, others in the braided dolmans of hussars.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the founder of Moral Majority, met here today with one of the organization's most outspoken critics, A. Bartlett Giamatti, president of Yale University, in a session arranged by Vice President Bush. ''I told him, 'I feel you were wrong then and I feel you are wrong now, but I feel we can disagree and remain friends,' '' Mr. Falwell said after emerging from a 45-minute discussion with Mr. Giamatti. In a speech last year, Mr. Giamatti assailed Moral Majority as propagating ''dangerous, malicious nonsense.'' Mr. Giamatti and the Yale administration did not publicly announce the meeting. Until 4 P.M., when Mr. Falwell mounted the marble stairs to Mr. Giamatti's high-ceilinged office, the official position was that Yale knew nothing of a meeting.

THE New York dance-club scene, like its patrons, rarely sits still. Every month new clubs open and others shut down, while gimmicks, decor and music policies come and go. In fact, it is always advisable to call a club before going; last-minute changes come with the territory. Currently, depending on who is explaining it, the club scene is thriving, declining, devouring itself, selling out, getting less exclusive, getting more elitist, stagnating, decentralizing or going underground. Club owners talk about increased overhead and a recessionary economy, then mention that Mick Jagger happened to drop by just the other night. Diehard scene-makers head for ever-more marginal neighborhoods at later (or is it earlier?) hours. But musicians are getting fewer and fewer dance-club gigs.