What was going on when I was born?

International OPEC members failed to agree on ways to apportion their share of a shrinking world oil market, causing a serious split among the oil ministers at their consultative meeting in Geneva. Agreement was blocked by unexpectedly insistent demands by Saudi Arabia and several of its Persian Gulf allies that settlement of a dispute over price discounting would have to precede agreement on production plans. The Saudi protest also threatened a partial agreement reached Sunday on lowering the group's maximum oil production this year to 17.5 million barrels a day. (Page A1, Column 6.) The slow pace of the talks in Lebanon on the withdrawal of foreign troops is worrying Administration officials. They are saying both publicly and privately that the sluggishness could lead to new difficulties in Israel-American relations. (A1:1.)

An emergency meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries ended today in disagreement over production quotas, raising the possibility that oil prices will decline further. Delegates said that a tentative agreement Sunday to keep OPEC's oil output to an average of 17.5 million barrels a day for the rest of this year fell apart because of Saudi Arabia's insistence that some of the other members end their practice of offering price discounts. Saudi Arabia, supported by several other oil producers along the Persian Gulf, argued that such discounts from the official OPEC price structure would have to end before the Saudis would agree to a new production ceiling. The accusations of discounting were aimed at Nigeria, Algeria, Libya and Iran, all of whom sell oil at $3 to $4 a barrel below rates based on OPEC's $34 guideline. The proposed new production ceiling - a million barrels a day below that set Ecomomists said the failure of the OPEC talks could lead to a small decline in oil prices. Page D17. Oil company shares declined by as much as $4, in part because of fears that lower prices would depress earnings. D16. Other stock prices fell broadly in heavy trading. Page D1. by OPEC in December - would have required a substantial reduction in Saudi Arabia's current production limits while benefiting Iran, which is attempting to replace Saudi Arabia as the OPEC pacesetter.

The operator of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant agreed out of court yesterday to accept $37 million in settling its suit against the manufacturer of the disabled reactor. The operator, the General Public Utilities Corporation, charged that it had suffered $4 billion in damages on March 28, 1979, in the worst accident in the history of commercial nuclear power. The settlement was reached after a trial in the suit had gone on for almost three months. The companies were reported eager to bring the trial to an end because further disclosures could damage the future of the nuclear power industry in which both parties had a large stake.

''Japan's postwar prosperity has flourished under our present Constitution, but the stormy seas which plague the world also strike relentlessly at Japan, as seen in the increasingly harsh trade friction.'' - Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. (A4:3.)

The Soviet Union is taking soundings to apply for observer status with the organization that sets global trade policy, posing a problem for the United States and other Western powers, Reagan Administration officials reported today. The Geneva-based organization, the 88-nation Council of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, seeks to promote global prosperity through trade liberalization. David F. Demarest, an official in the Office of the United States Trade Representative, said, ''The fact that the Russians have not indicated a willingness to ultimately join GATT or adhere to GATT rules gives us some measure of concern.''

century dabbling with alchemy, compulsively heading down a blind alley. A misguided quest also took hold of Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, who spent long years mired in futile attempts to communicate with spirits of the dead. That great men sometimes go sour is an undeniable fact in the annals of science. Historians, who once focused mainly on triumphs, in the recent past have expanded their horizons and found that not a few celebrated scientists held a variety of bogus ideas that previously were overshadowed by work of genius. One scholar fascinated by the wrong turns is Dr. Frank E. Manuel, a historian at Brandeis University, who shows how the lofty Newton immersed himself in alchemy and the search for occult powers, toiling late into the night, at times dozing off next to a bubbling flask.

Brewers are adopting ''anticompetitive'' distribution practices that will drive up the cost of beer to consumers by hundreds of millions of dollars, the State Attorney General said today. To prevent this, the Attorney General, Robert Abrams, has called for legislation prohibiting beer companies from establishing ''territorial monopolies'' - areas in which retailers can buy from only one wholesaler. When the monopolies are established, Mr. Abrams said, the price of beer ''may rise by as much as 20 percent.''

One year after a local law took effect requiring smoke detectors to be placed in individual apartments, about a third of the apartment buildings in the city are violating it, New York City officials said yesterday. A total of 41,000 buildings are not certified by the city as having complied with the law. In many of these cases, landlords may have equipped the apartments fully and simply failed to file a certificate with the city. But housing officials said they had no way of knowing precisely how many of the city's two million apartments were without the devices. Inspectors cannot visit every apartment in the city, they said, although they do respond to specific complaints.

President Reagan will deliver his nationally televised State of the Union Message tonight at 9 o'clock By HOWELL RAINES President Reagan's image as a strong leader in firm control of his Administration has apparently been damaged because of a general decline of support for some major policies that he is expected to reaffirm tonight in his third State of the Union Message. According to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, the reduced support for Mr. Reagan is linked to a perception that he has failed to deal with unemployment or respond to the plight of the unemployed. The poll showed that by most of its measures of Presidential leadership, Mr. Reagan's standing has now declined at least as much as President Carter's did after his first two years in office. In addition, the poll, taken among 1,597 adults from Jan. 16 to Jan. 19, indicates that Mr. Reagan is out of step with a majority of Americans on two policies that form the foundation of his program. Of those polled, 6 out of 10 said they were willing to set aside the third year of Mr. Reagan's regimen of income tax reductions and to reduce his planned increases in military spending to reduce the deficit in the Federal budget. Last March about half of those polled were willing to take these steps to reduce the Federal deficit.

Weakened by both domestic and international pressures, the British pound fell almost 3 cents today to a record low against the dollar on the news that OPEC ministers, meeting in Geneva, had failed to reach agreement on oil production quotas and pricing. The pound, which traded here this afternoon at $1.5360, also dropped more than a point, to 81.8, on the Bank of England's closely watched index of the pound's strength in relation to the currencies of Britain's major trading partners. ''It's been 'dump sterling' day,'' said Terry Ellis, the senior manager in charge of foreign exchange trading at the National Westminster Bank. There was widespread agreement in the City, London's financial district, that the main downward force on the pound was fear of an oil price war, which would shrink the earnings Britain gets from exporting North Sea oil.

A year after fire severely damaged the home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, only two rooms of the 35-room building are open to the public. A 12-member crew has begun to repair the structure and restore the furnishings to what they were before the fire. The work, under the supervision of Edward Sturm, the project manager, and his assistant, Dominick Proce, is to prepare the building for a major reconstruction under a $2 million appropriation by Congress. ''We hope to have the first floor open within a year, if things work out,'' said Donald McTernan, the chief curator of the site, which is a popular tourist attraction.

The Calendar column on the Washington Talk page yesterday incorrectly listed the site of the Washington Press Club's annual Salute to Congress Dinner tomorrow. It will be at the Sheraton Washington Hotel.