What was going on when I was born?

The inability of Secretary of State George P. Shultz to make any apparent headway with President Hafez al-Assad of Syria on the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Lebanon leaves the country partitioned between Israel and Syria indefinitely, with the Lebanese Government's control limited to parts of Beirut. For the short run, State Department officials said, American efforts will probably be limited to what one official called ''damage control'' - maintaining contacts with Syria through the joint ''working groups'' agreed to by the Syrians today and trying to insure that Israel and Syria avoid a direct clash in the Bekaa, Lebanon's eastern valley, where their forces are virtually head to head. The lack of progress reported by Mr. Shultz has seemed to undercut American prestige in the region. The Lebanese and the Israelis, who both agreed to the terms for Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon at the urging of Mr. Shultz in May, are expressing concern privately and publicly over the American inability to obtain comparable results from the Syrians.

Connecticut officials said today that the entire Connecticut Turnpike bridge from which a 100-foot section fell last week might be unsafe. ''Inspections have revealed that the design of the hung-type girder sections of the bridge is considered 'suspect,' '' J. William Burns, the State Commissioner of Transportation, said in a statement. Mr. Burns was referring to the pin and hanger structures attaching the roadway to steel girders underneath. As a result of the findings, the state will install long steel rods connecting the remaining sections of the Mianus River bridge here to one another, according to William Keish Jr., director of communications for the State Transportation Department. Possible Delay in Reopening It was uncertain whether this would delay the bridge's reopening, originally planned for next week. Traffic delays, meanwhile, continued in the Connecticut and Westchester County area yesterday. Southbound cars and trucks backed up for half a mile before the detour from the turnpike, which as Interstate 95 is the major road link between New York and New England. In addition, jams plagued Route 1 in both directions through Port Chester, N.Y., and Greenwich.

''I was a Foreign Service officer for 16 years. The things I had to deal with were terrorism, civil wars and riots.

The Supreme Court ruled today that the Federal law against sex discrimination in employment prohibits employer-sponsored retirement plans that give men and women unequal benefits. But the Court said its ruling would affect only future pension contributions. By a vote of 5 to 4, the Court said the longer life of women as a group compared with men as a group does not permit insurance companies, as part of employer-sponsored retirement plans, to pay lower monthly annuity benefits to women. The ruling came on the last day of the Court's term.

The Big Three car makers reported today that their sales jumped 55.2 percent in the June 21-30 period, continuing a rebound that started in May. The increase in June's final selling period came in comparison with a weak period last year, when sales had slowed as rebates were phased out. Most of the nation's auto makers have been offering sales incentives since the start of this year, particularly below-market interest rates on auto loans, but analysts predicted that strong sales would continue now even without major sales incentives. ''It's now crystal clear the car makers have moved into a recovery phase,'' said John Hammond, an analyst at Data Resources Inc., a consulting firm in Lexington, Mass.

Stokely-Van Camp Inc., in a first indication of opposition to a takeover bid by the Pillsbury Company, told its shareholders yesterday not to tender their stock until antitrust questions can be answered. The directive to stockholders was Stokely's opening public response to the Pillsbury bid since the disclosure last week that Pillsbury, the Minneapolis-based food and restaurant company, was seeking to acquire Stokely, a food processor based in Indianapolis. Stokely said that at a directors' meeting on Tuesday its board authorized its attorneys to pursue any litigation that may be appropriate in order to settle the ''substantial antitrust questions which may preclude Pillsbury from acquiring Stokely common stock on the basis it has proposed.'' The company did not elaborate on the antitrust issues and Pillsbury said it knew of no antitrust issues.

C.H. Butcher Jr., whose Tennessee banking network collapsed last spring, was using a separate chain of Kentucky banks to finance millions of dollars of business investments for himself, his brother and their associates, according to a lawsuit and Kentucky banking regulators. State regulators, in auditing the nine Kentucky banks owned or controlled by Mr. Butcher and the one Kentucky bank owned by his brother, Jake Butcher, found $50 million worth of loans made to interests outside of Kentucky, many apparently connected to one or both of the brothers, according to banking sources who asked not to be identified. Lending to so-called bank insiders is occasionally done at arm's length in Kentucky, said William R. Miller, deputy commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Banking and Securities, in Frankfort. However, he continued, in the case of the Butchers not only were the loans large and numerous but also a number of them were made in apparent violation of lending limits set by state law, ''There is an appearance that in several of these banks there was an inordinate, even a flagrant, violation of the lending limit statutes,'' Mr. Miller said. ''There is an appearance that it was purposeful, not just an occasional failure to take into account the lending limits.''

''No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. Though an old man, I am but a young gardener.'' - Thomas Jefferson THE best-known image of Monticello is the facade on the back of the Jefferson nickel. But Jefferson - an amateur architect who designed this famous house - was also a gentleman botanist, gardener and landscape architect who at Monticello created experimental gardens and an embellished landscape that have a significance and beauty that rival the building.

Out the door the line stretched, past the pretzel vendors on Fifth Avenue, past the statue of Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders. Under the bright sun, passport applicants waited, some looking as if Atlas had the easier task. ''It's a nightmare, it's insane,'' said Margery Franklin of Manhattan, who had been waiting to get her passport for more than four hours. ''It's as if they don't mind making people suffer.''

Governor Cuomo of New York today accused President Reagan of promoting a policy of ''supply-side education.'' In an address here to the convention of the American Federation of Teachers, he defined that as meaning that ''we will take resources from those most in need and move them to those we deem the strongest.'' ''For the first time in modern American history,'' he said, ''this national Administration has adopted a conscious policy of reducing the Federal commitment to education.''

The first ants in space apparently did not survive. Students at two high schools in Camden, N.J., who worked on a fiveyear science project that culminated in their ant colony's orbiting the earth aboard the recent flight of the space shuttle Challenger, were told this week that their ants had died. When the canister containing the colony was taken off the shuttle at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and opened Tuesday, the students were told, the carpenter ant colony was found dehydrated, and Norma, the queen, and all her 50 to 100 subjects were dead. ''We don't know the cause of death,'' said Fred Reiss, a teacher and the project's coordinator at Camden High School. ''If they died in orbit, that is significant.''

For the first time in more than a decade, the New York Public Library will use city funds to open some branches on Sundays. Beginning in September, the Donnell Library in Manhattan, the Fordham branch in the Bronx and the St. George branch on Staten Island will have Sunday hours. The Brooklyn Public Library will increase hours in some libraries and add some new staff members. The Queens Public Library will spend $100,000 on new books.