What was going on when I was born?

Federal, state and county prosecutors have begun separate investigations into possible corruption in the operations of Newark's city government and Housing Authority. In interviews, law-enforcement officials said they were examining city records and interviewing city employees in these investigations: - The office of the United States Attorney is investigating the Housing Authority, according to W. Hunt Dumont, the United States Attorney for New Jersey. The State Commission of Investigation earlier this year turned over to the Federal prosecutor the results of its investigation of the New Jersey Housing Finance Agency, and the state commission said some of the material focused on the Housing Authority. - The County Prosecutor's office is looking into payments made by the city to some of the companies hired to salt city streets last winter, said George L. Schneider, the Essex County Prosecutor. - The State Division of Criminal Justice is investigating the city's purchasing practices, said Thomas Cannon, administrative assistant to Irwin I. Kimmelman, the State Attorney General.

''I will not quit like a rat, I will not run away.'' - Lech Walesa. (A8:3.)

Secretary of State George P. Shultz criticized the Soviet Union today for its rejection of interim proposals made last month by the United States at the Geneva talks on limiting medium-range missiles. Mr. Shultz, saying the United States offer was ''reasonable,'' added: ''It is up to the Soviet Union to respond to that, and not simply say we reject it. Try something else. I think we are owed a responsible answer.''

The high hopes of the United States team dissipated today, and East Germany won the two-day combined competition, 197 to 181, between two of the world's track and field powers. A crowd of 16,113 watched the American men complete a 125-97 victory over the East German men. The East German women defeated their American counterparts, 100-56. The meet concluded on an overcast afternoon at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where track and field will be contested in the Olympic Games next summer.

Beside a small farm on Route 96 here in the Finger Lakes Region, a sign says: ''Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice.'' The sign, leaning in the shade of a tall tree, is strikingly neat and glossy, in contrast with a nearby house where the shutters droop on their hinges, the porch railing is broken and only a hint of paint remains. A group of women bought the 52-acre farm in May and hopes to attract hundreds of women here this summer to use the farm's fields as a camping ground and assembly area for antinuclear demonstrations. Adjoining the land is the target of the protests - the Seneca Army Depot, an 11,000-acre ammunitions storage site that is widely assumed to contain nuclear weapons. The Army will not comment on this.

Orders for machine tools, a barometer of industrial health, grew 14 percent from April to May, the National Machine Tool Builders Association reported yesterday. Thus, after a dismal 1982 that saw orders fall 49 percent, the tool industry began showing tentative signs of a recovery last month. Orders rose to $135.5 million in May, about 28 percent above the level of a year earlier.

International A shift in favor of democracy in Chile has led to the first serious challenge that the country's ruler, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, has faced since he sized power nearly 10 years ago, according to his supporters and opponenets. But the general has said that there will be no elections until at least 1989. (Page A1, Column 1.) Moscow was sharply criticized by Secretary of state George P. Shultz f its rejection of interim proposals made last month by the United States at the Geneva talks on limiting medium-range missiles. He said the offer was "resonable." He made his Manila before leaving for Bangkok, the second stop of a four-nation trip to Asia. (A1:2.) 15 members of a Pentacostal family will be allowed to emigrate from the Soviet UNion to Israel, Soviet authorities announced. The 15 includes 7 who pressed their case by taking refuge for nearly five years in the United States Embassy in Moscow. The Soviet move appeared to an effort troward resolving a human-rights case troubling Soviet-American relations. (A1:3.)

Rusty Staub tied a pinch-hitting record. Darryl Strawberry got three hits in a game for the first time as a major leaguer, and Mike Torrez pitched a three-hitter. The Mets, though not ecstatic, could at least smile after splitting a doubleheader with the Philadelphia Phillies yesterday in front of 37,922 at Shea Stadium. Staub came to bat in the ninth inning of the opener, an 8-4 Met loss, and delivered his eighth consecutive pinch-hit, lashing Ron Reed's 0-1 pitch into right field. The 39-year-old Staub thus became only the second major league player to collect eight straight pinchhits in one season, tying the record set by Philadelphia's Dave Philley in 1958. Philley got a pinch-hit in his first appearance in 1959 for the overall record of nine straight.

It looks like a rich summer at the Sono Cinema: Italian art films, oldies but goodies and ''Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy'' - the piece de resistance of an annual ''turkey film festival.'' The glitter of Hollywood stops a few thousand miles short of the Sono, a small repertory theater on the edge of a shopping center on the edge of this working-class town. The entrance is through a parking lot, the manager's office houses bags of unpopped corn and the theater has only 350 seats. The Sono is the enterprise, and a modestly profitable one, of Brian Fox, a 37-year-old who has always liked movies but never wanted to make them. Now, his favorites are ''the ones I won't go broke on,'' he said. ''Usually, if you show something really obscure, and you're not in New York, you die with it.''

Governor Cuomo and key lawmakers agreed Sunday to set up an inspector general's office to oversee the operation of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a safety board to investigate mass transit accidents. But in the effort to adjourn the 206th session of the New York State Legislature, all sides acknowledged that no action would be taken on the authority's effort to ease requirements to make 88 subway stations accessible to the handicapped as part of a renovation program. The M.T.A. has warned that if the requirements stood, the renovations might have to be delayed. Trouble With Bond Issue Wording Leaders of the Legislature, struggling to bring the session to a close, whipped votes into line on an oil tax, battled to hold together an agreement on a plan to revise rent-stabilization laws and haggled over the language of a bond issue. Both houses worked into the early hours this morning, their eighth consecutive work day, in a mood of growing frustration and restlessness.

For the first time since he seized power nearly 10 years ago, Gen. Augusto Pinochet is being seriously challenged, according to supporters as well as opponents. Western diplomats and even many of the general's advisers say that the newfound willingness of hundreds of thousands of Chileans to defy the Government with protests and strikes in the last six weeks reflects a fundamental political shift in the country in favor of democracy. The general has said that there will be no elections until at least 1989. The Chilean ruler, who took over in 1973 in a violent coup that led to the death of the democratically elected President, Salvador Allende Gossens, is not about to be toppled, the officials and diplomats said. But they said the labor unrest had coincided with grumblings in the army over rumors of corruption in the general's family and his handling of the growing dissent. The army is General Pinochet's base of power and he could not survive the loss of its support, they said.

Soviet authorities announced today that 15 members of a Pentecostal family would be allowed to leave for Israel, including 5 who pressed their case by taking refuge for nearly five years in the United States Embassy. The Soviet move appeared to be an effort toward resolving one of the most contentious human-rights cases troubling Soviet-American relations and was greeted by some Western diplomats as a gesture by Moscow toward better relations with Washington. The diplomats noted that the Reagan Administration had called for concrete steps to substantiate Moscow's expressed desire for improved relations. The Western diplomats observed that the announcement came on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the date members of two Pentecostal families took sanctuary in the embassy, timing that they said could have been intended as symbolic. Seven members of two families - the Vashchenkos and the Chmykhalovs - burst into the embassy in Moscow on June 27, 1978, and lived there in a cramped basement apartment until returning to Siberia in April.