What was going on when I was born?

Braniff Airways announced yesterday that it had reached an agreement in principle to sell 20 Boeing 727-200 planes to People Express Airlines for $80 million and to lease to the low-cost carrier a 747-200 aircraft. In a statement issued from Braniff's headquarters in Dallas, Howard D. Putnam, chairman, said that the agreement ''provides a significant step in the resolution of Braniff's bankruptcy and the development of continuing businesses for our reorganization.'' Mr. Putnam noted that the agreement was subject to the approval of the bankruptcy court in Fort Worth, which has been supervising Braniff's filing of May 13, 1982, for protection under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy law. Braniff has until April 4 to file a new plan for reorganization. An earlier plan was ruled inadequate by a Federal appeals court this month, a decision that led to the collapse of a deal with PSA Inc. to use Braniff planes and employees to begin service in Dallas.

''I guess my immediate task, as I see it, is to stabilize E.P.A., is to reinstill in the people there the dedication to their task, to their jobs that they have had from the outset of that agency, and to get on with this enormously complicated job of cleaning up our air and water and protecting our citizens against toxic substances.'' - William D. Ruckelshaus. (A22:3.)

WITH college costs rising and Federal funds shrinking, it is no wonder that more parents are panicky about finding the money to finance their children's higher education. But some solutions are being offered. St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., gives parents the bad news that the total estimated four-year cost for a student enrolling this fall will be $36,600. But then the college has some good news. St. Olaf has devised an innovative trust fund mechanism that several other colleges may soon mimic. Basically, it is a way for parents to get more income - enough to send two or even three children through college - from the same assets they would normally have to sell to cover one child's four-year costs. There is one significant drawback to the proposal, however: the family must have, or borrow, $50,000 worth of assets.

An article in New York Day by Day yesterday incorrectly identified the lyricist of a song sung by Mayor Koch at the annual dinner of the Inner Circle. He is Maury Yeston.

AMERICAN hotel guests in Cuzco, Peru, 12,000 feet high in the Andes, are sometimes surprised at being offered coca tea to help them adjust to the altitude. But it seems to help and they probably suffer no ill effects. Peruvian Indians have been using it for generations. ''At the other end of the spectrum,'' said Dr. Robert Byck of Yale University, an expert on cocaine, ''is a man I encountered who was spending $400,000 a year, buying cocaine by the half pound, and shooting it intravenously. He was sitting in a blacked-out cellar with an M-1 rifle, shooting at his hallucinations.'' The man in the basement and the hotel guests in Cuzco were taking the same drug. The two uses point up the dramatic difference in reactions to which many Americans are now subjecting themselves. Use of illicit drugs is continuing to rise among American adults, and social scientists believe that to a large extent this usage has become increasingly ''acceptable'' on all levels of American society. To medical experts, such acceptance represents dangerous ignorance. ''The selection in the delicatessen of drugs is much greater than its ever been,'' says Dr. M. Duncan Stantan of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Some of these natural or artificially produced chemicals are new or recently produced variants of older forms that are better understood than the new ones.

Eight European nations agreed today to realign their currencies after West Germany accepted French demands and agreed to a set of currency values that avoided the possible collapse of the European Monetary System. West Germany and four other members of the European Monetary System revalued their currencies upward, with the German mark rising 5.5 percent in relation to the seven other European currencies. The French, in turn, agreed to a devaluation of only 2.5 percent, which was two or three percentage points less than what Bonn had sought. ''It was up to our German partners to make the biggest step,'' said Jacques Delors, the French Finance Minister, at a news conference. ''They made it.''

International An accord to realign currencies was reached by eight West European countries after West Germany accepted French demands and agreed to a set of currency values that avoided the possible collapse of Europe's monetary system. West Germany and four other countries revalued their currencies upward, with the German mark rising 5.5 percent in relation to the seven other currencies, while Paris agreed to a devaluation of only 2.5 percent, less than Bonn had sought. (Page A1, Column 1.) Israel has agreed to share with the United States information on Soviet military equipment and tactics gained from the war in Lebanon without insisting on a new intelligence-gathering agreement, American and Israeli officials said. (A1:2.)

House and Senate conferees agreed tonight on an emergency job bill that would provide about $4.6 billion to create employment opportunities and provide humanitarian aid for jobless workers. The bill marks the first concrete response by Congress to the unemployment problem that has left more than 11 million Americans without jobs. Congressional leaders say they will follow with additional legislation to aid workers and revive sagging industries, but many lawmakers doubt whether those bills will survive the legislative gamut and a possible veto. Earlier, the conferees had yielded to a veto threat by President Reagan and eliminated $1.2 billion from the bill that the Senate had allocated for revenue sharing to local governments.

A State Supreme Court justice yesterday invalidated the city's approval of the Lincoln West luxury-housing proposal. The justice, Richard W. Wallach, said the developer could not proceed unless a new environmental-impact study was prepared and approved. The city said the ruling was based on incomplete information and expected the decision to be reversed. Justice Wallach would not comment beyond his ruling.

RECEIVED astronomical wisdom holds that nothing yet seen in the universe is farther away than the peculiar objects called quasars. Now, however, special processing of telescope photographs is providing ammunition for dissenters who think quasars may not be so far out after all. The enhanced photographs seem to show some kind of short ''bridge,'' some physical structure, connecting the quasars to galaxies that lie next to them in the pictures. If the bridges are real, the quasars cannot be all that distant from the galaxies. And the galaxies are far closer to the Earth than customary astronomical yardsticks say the quasars can possibly be.

The Associated Dry Goods Corporation, which owns Lord & Taylor, Caldor and other leading retailers, is negotiating to acquire Loehmann's Inc., the large, women's fashion discount chain, trade sources said yesterday. Neither William P. Arnold, chairman of Associated, nor George J. Greenberg, Loehmann's president, could be reached for comment yesterday afternoon. But sources close to both companies said Associated and Loehmann's were in serious negotiations and were approaching a conclusion. The sources said that an announcement of an agreement in principle had been planned yestrerday, but that ''a technical hitch'' developed that had postponed it for several days to a week.They added that the pending agreement called for payment in cash and stock.

A Presidential commission proposed yesterday that mentally competent patients be allowed to halt medical treatment that keeps them alive without any hope of curing or ameliorating their condition. Family members or others acting on behalf of mentally incompetent patients should be allowed to make similar decisions, the commission said. The chief, practical significance of the recommendation is that it would apply in cases where such a patient's own doctor or doctors object to the termination of his treatment. The commission's report, ''Deciding to Forgo Life-Sustaining Treatment,'' offered recommendations on some of the most troubling ethical problems of modern medicine. The issues have been raised because of the ability of modern machines and medical technology to prolong almost any life.