What was going on when I was born?

The pilots at Eastern Air Lines Inc. could end up with a 21 percent stake in the airline in return for about $100 million in work-rule and benefits concessions, according to a top official of the pilots' union. In a taped telephone message to his members, Richard H. Heckenberger, a pilot at Eastern and the chairman of Council 51 of the Airline Pilots Association, said that the agreement reached last Friday calls on Eastern to issue ''subordinated debt securities that will be converted into equity.'' Mr. Heckenberger added: ''This will mean we will own 21 percent of Eastern Airlines, which is one hell of a statement. Never before in the airline industry has this happened.''

NEW YORK CITY has more than 14,000 restaurants, some of which seem to change identities like movie marquees. So it is no small feat for the city's Health Department to keep keep track of them, let alone monitor them for cleanliness. What makes the task even more difficult is that the department has only 17 full-time restaurant inspectors. Albert Simms is one of them. ''Look at those baked goods on the counter top,'' Mr. Simms said, glancing furtively at the pastry display in a delicatessen near City Hall in Manhattan. ''There are two problems: the custard-filled pastries should be refrigerated - bacteria love that environment - and there should be a sneeze guard over them.'' Mr. Simms, a sanitarian with the city's Department of Health, spends his days in restaurants and food shops poking behind refrigerators, sticking thermometers in salads and snooping around basement storerooms.

New York State's highest court ruled today that landlords have the right to evict unrelated people who are sharing an apartment without the landlord's consent. The decision by the State Court of Appeals held that a tenant who invited a male friend to move into her apartment without notifying the landlord had violated the terms of her lease. Most leases in New York City limit occupancy of the apartment to the person who signs the lease and members of the tenant's immediate family. Attorneys for both sides in the case said the decision could affect thousands of unmarried couples and could also apply to unrelated roommates and homosexual couples.

The Reagan Administration moved today toward adoption of a new negotiating position in strategic arms talks with the Soviet Union. The move was widely seen as an effort to placate Congressional critics of the MX missile. Congressional and White House sources said the National Security Council, at a meeting in the White House today, generally favored the concept that American negotiators should put more stress on limiting nuclear warheads and less on the number of missile launchers. But details of the new position are being worked out and a final decision awaits another meeting this month, the sources said.

China awarded an offshore oil exploration contract today to a group of Western companies headed by British Petroleum. The contract was the first to result from China's first official round of bidding for oil concessions, in which 33 foreign companies participated last year. There were no American oil companies in the B.P. group, although at least 15 had submitted bids to China. A Western commercial specialist said that the Chinese had hoped to announce more contracts, but that some of the American concerns had held out for better terms. The companies are finding that the slackened world demand for oil, and the consequent decline in price, has made the potential oil off China less exciting.

An internal Environmental Protection Agency report says the agency's hazardous waste programs have been so seriously impeded by mismanagement that they are not adequately protecting the public. The report was ordered early this year by Anne McGill Burford, then the agency's Administrator, as criticism of the E.P.A.'s handling of hazardous waste cleanup mounted, and continuing work on it was endorsed by the current interim leaders at the agency. The report confirms several of the allegations about the management of the $1.6 billion program to clean up hazardous waste that are being investigated by several House committees. Internal Bickering Cited In particular, the report describes a policy of saving the fund's money instead of acting quickly to clean up waste sites, and of bickering among agency officials that slowed or stopped action.

Not since 1945, when the Conservatives under Winston Churchill joined battle against Labor under Clement Attlee, have Britain's major political parties fought a general election on platforms as diametrically opposed as the ones they have adopted for the balloting four weeks from Thursday. Not everything the parties promise will come to pass, of course. World trends and events, as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has discovered during her four years in office, can push the most determined leader off the track, and changing domestic realities can prompt change as well. But political manifestoes are taken seriously here, by both the electorate and the parties themselves, and the outcome on June 9 is likely to have a profound effect on Britain's future.

The Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week threatened to shut down the two Indian Point nuclear reactors June 9 unless major improvements were made in plans for dealing with a possible emergency at the plants. The commission criticized as inadequate the preparations for a possible evacuation of the area within 10 miles of Indian Point, in Buchanan in Westchester County. The N.R.C. cited the unwillingness of bus drivers to work in an emergency and the refusal of Rockland County, across the Hudson River from the plants, to join in the planning. One plant is operated by the New York Power Authority and the other by the Consolidated Edison Company. In an interview with Matthew L. Wald of The New York Times, Arthur Hauspurg, chairman, president and chief executive of Con Edison, discussed the threat to shut down Indian Point and the status of the emergency plans.

Stock prices advanced broadly yesterday as small and institutional investors alike stepped up their buying and sent volume over the 100 million mark. In the overall market, advancing issues on the New York Stock Exchange outscored declining stocks by 1,010 to 675. Analysts noted that investors apparently are convinced that the nine-month rally still has some way to go before the long-awaited correction.

Governor Kean said today that he had suspended Reese Palley, a businessman and art dealer, as a member of the New Jersey Lottery Commission. Mr. Palley was indicted April 29 on charges that he tried to thwart inquiry into his activities by an ethics commission. In a letter dated Monday, the Governor informed Mr. Palley that he was immediately suspending him from the Lottery Commission ''in order to preserve public confidence and the integrity of its operations.''

International A buildup of Syrian and P.L.O. forces in Lebanon was reported by the State Department, which expressed concern about the ''persistent threat of renewed hostilities.'' American intelligence officials say that 10,000 Syrian troops have entered Lebanon in the last two months and that Syrian troop strength there now is just under 50,000. (Page A1, Column 6.) George P. Shultz appealed to Moscow to drop its opposition to the Israeli-Lebanese troop withdrawal agreement and to use its influence to bring about the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. The Secretary of State spoke to reporters in Paris. (A8:1.)

Led by the Scots pipes and drums of Toronto's Metropolitan Police Band, the city's stockbrokers, in traditional top hat and tails, marched two blocks this week into a new technological era. The ceremonial walk marked the formal move on Monday by the Toronto Stock Exchange from the Bay Street building that had housed its operations for 46 years into a new $25 million (Canadian) trading floor, with some of the most advanced trading equipment in the world. As if to celebrate its new home, the exchange's composite index of 300 stocks soared 28.4 points to a record high of 2,457.7 today, topping the previous high of 2,436.22, set Friday, its last day in the old building. Exchange Has Performed Well Over the last 10 months, the Toronto market has registered one of the sharpest increases anywhere in the world, even outperforming the booming American market. Indeed, Toronto stock prices rose 80 percent in the period, their best performance since the 1930's, while the Dow Jones industrial average was up 50 percent.