What was going on when I was born?

New York City has obtained a court order against the New York Yankees to try to prevent the team from playing its opening home games in Denver next April instead of at Yankee Stadium. The city went to court late Monday after George Steinbrenner, principal owner of the Yankees, informed Parks Commissioner Gordon J. Davis that the Yankees intended to sign an agreement yesterday with the City of Denver, which owns Mile High Stadium. Under the proposed agreement, the Yankees would play the first three home games of the 1983 baseball season in Denver, beginning April 11. At issue is construction now under way at Yankee Stadium. According to Commissioner Davis, it will be completed in time for the Yankees to play their first home game at the stadium. The lease for the stadium stipulates that the Yankees must play all their home games there until the lease expires, in 2002.

A New York State drought alert to encourage conservation in New York City and in all or part of 25 upstate counties was issued yesterday by Robert F. Flacke, the state's Environmental Conservation Commissioner. The state alert followed a local advisory by Joseph T. McGough Jr., the city's Environmental Protection Commissioner, urging restraint in the use of water. The advisory and alert are the mildest drought-warning categories. The most serious are a drought emergency in the city and a drought disaster in the state.

President Reagan's national security adviser, William P. Clark, sought today to persuade the nation's Roman Catholic bishops that the Administration's policies on nuclear arms were guided by compelling moral considerations. ''It is important for the Bishops Conference to know our decisions on nuclear armaments and our defensive posture are guided by moral considerations as compelling as any which have faced mankind,'' Mr. Clark asserted in a letter. ''The strategy of deterrence on Text of Clark letter, page B4. which our policies are based is not an end in itself but a means to prevent war and preserve the values we cherish.''

IMPECCABLY tailored in muted browns, balding with steel gray fringes of hair, wearing thick glasses, Dino De Laurentiis looks very much like the movie mogul he is. He gesticulates broadly, smokes incessantly and talks rapidly in heavily accented English. But rather than act the part of the tycoon-producer and greeting visitors from behind his imposing 18th-century English partners' desk - which is so vast an entire board of directors could sit around it - Mr. De Laurentiis is waiting at the door. The desk overwhelms its diminutive owner and his spacious Central Park South office, but Mr. De Laurentiis says he will never part with it. It has traveled with him from London to Rome to Los Angeles and now to New York, where he lives and works. ''I bought it almost 30 years ago,'' he explained, ''just before I made 'War and Peace.' I am Neapolitan; I am superstitious.'' Mr. De Laurentiis was born in Torre Annunziata, on the Bay of Naples, 60 years ago, the son of a successful pasta manufacturer and miller, and there is nothing he loves more than a plate of hot spaghetti. He is considered an excellent cook, a judgment he shares. ''Spaghetti,'' he once said, ''should be cooked with love, fantasy and art. I cook pasta as Picasso painted.''

Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan is considering whether to move up the 1983 income tax cut from July to January as a way to stimulate the economy, Administration officials reported today. In conversations with his own staff and the White House, Mr. Regan has talked about proposing tax-cut legislation in the special session of Congress that starts Nov. 29. The officials said it might not be possible to change withholding tax rates before the end of January, even if Congress moved swiftly, but there would be no problem in effecting the 10 percent acrossthe-board cut in personal income taxes on Jan. 1 instead of July 1. Drop in Industrial Activity The Treasury chief was reported to be persuaded that the continuing decline in industrial activity required the Government to take some action, lest 1983 turn out to be a year of sluggish economic growth and unemployment in excess of 10 percent.

Senior Soviet trade officials told a group of American businessmen convening here today for the first time in four years that Washington would have to renounce trade sanctions if United States-Soviet trade were to revive. But they appeared eager for a resumption. In the opening Soviet address to some 250 American executives gathered for a four-day trade conference, the Soviet Minister for Foreign Trade, Nikolai S. Patolichev, said: ''It is necessary for the United States to renounce once and for all the doctrine of using trade as a weapon against our country.'' Without the confidence that agreements would not be broken, Mr. Patolichev declared, ''no businessman will sign a deal.'' Since 1979, the last year before economic sanctions of one sort or another were imposed, the American share of Soviet machinery imports had dropped to 3 percent from 7 percent, and the United States share of grain imports fell to 17 percent from 71 percent, the minister said. He added that only eight-tenths of 1 percent of Soviet equipment purchases now come from the United States.

The Soviet and Chinese Foreign Ministers met here today for 90 minutes in the highest-level encounter the two nations have had since 1969. The meeting occurred in the context of the gathering of foreign dignitaries in Moscow for the funeral of Leonid I. Brezhnev. The Soviet press agency Tass, in a brief summary, said that the two ministers, Andrei A. Gromyko and Huang Hua, had had ''a brief exchange of opinions on matters of interest to both sides.'' It also said they had reaf@firmed an agreement to continue ''a political dialogue'' that was begun in Peking last month.

Paul A. Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve, said tonight that the nation's central bank would not tighten monetary policy simply because two key money supply figures are currently above the Fed's target range. His statement, reinforcing views he has expressed in recent weeks, indicated that the Federal Reserve has not precluded a further cut in the discount rate, now at 9 1/2 percent. For weeks, the financial markets have been counting on a cut in the discount rate to 9 percent or lower, which would bring down general interest rates another notch and stimulate the stock market. But yesterday's report by the Fed that the two key money supply measures, M-1 and M-2, had grown beyond the Fed's target ranges led some analysts to conclude that the Fed might not cut the discount rate very soon.

The old saw about the business that lost money on every sale but made it up on volume has had a bitter ring for the property and casualty insurance industry in recent years. For as a result of severe price cutting since 1978 - especially in commercial, rather than personal, lines where corporate buyers have economic muscle - insurance companies as a group have been reporting steady underwriting losses, or losses from the sale of insurance products. But the earnings from the investments in their portfolios have far surpassed the deficits from price cutting, thereby enabling the industry to post overall profits. Now the nation's insurers are concerned that the sharp drop in interest rates that began last August will cut their investment income substantially. And without this protective cushion, there is widespread fear that the overall profitability of insurers, which are regulated by the states, will be significantly reduced unless premiums are immediately increased.

A headline on the Style page yesterday misstated the trend reflected in recent fashion showings. It should have said, ''Designers Turn to Formality in a Spring Accessory Spree.''

Anthropologists reported today that the largest group of complete skeletons surviving from ancient Roman times had been unearthed at Herculaneum, a town buried in the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii. The scientists said the discovery of more than 80 human skeletons was providing new insights into the searing, suffocating and nearly instantaneous death suffered by the citizens of the small Mediterranean resort in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius 1,900 years ago. The finding of the first four skeletons in the group was announced two years ago, and additional discoveries have been made since then. But it was not until today that the dimensions of the find were reported.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. THE timing and contents of meals, as well as the consumption of certain individual nutrients, can have subtle and occasionally dramatic effects on mood and behavior, according to a series of new studies described at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week. Several of the studies indicate that foods and nutrients might be used therapeutically to treat such common problems as depression, insomnia, hyperactivity, chronic pain and carbohydrate cravings. The evidence presented, which shows that specific foods and nutrients can produce specific changes in the chemical balance of the brain, also suggests that diet might be tailored to suit the task at hand. For example, the research indicates, it might be best to consume a high-protein, low-carbohydrate meal before doing a complicated job that requires concentration and alertness.