What was going on when I was born?

Leading his family on a forced march through Manhattan, Tom Sparacio of Snohomish, Wash., looked over his shoulder to announce that the next stop on their sightseeing tour was the New York Stock Exchange. His 6-year-old son, Jeff, could not wait to see the cows and pigs. This is tourist season in New York, a time when an inordinate number of pedestrians seem to be looking up and walking into things, when people with cameras around their necks can be seen greeting total strangers on the subways, when New Yorkers are asked to open their couches to visitors and when even hot dog vendors and pigeons are expected to pose for family albums. The first man in Budweiser shorts - imprinted with dozens of copies of the beer company's logo - has been sighted in Times Square. ''We're going to the Empire State Building,'' said the man, Earl Williams of Kansas City, Mo., who also wore an Atlantic City T-shirt. ''Then my wife wants to go to '21' for lunch.'' Mr. Williams said he had no reservations, he would surprise them.

A Federal judge said today that he would give final approval to the breakup of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company once certain changes were made to protect the principle of universal telephone service at a reasonable cost. The ruling by District Judge Harold H. Greene was the latest of several that he has made on different aspects of the huge divestiture plan. If A.T.&T. and the Justice Department accept these conditions, then the divestiture of A.T.&T.'s 22 local phone companies would go ahead unimpeded by further legal hurdles. It is now scheduled to be completed in January.

The number of people with jobs rose sharply last month and the unemployment rate, when the armed forces are included, declined to 9.8 percent of the labor force from 10 percent, the Department of Labor announced today. The civilian rate of unemployment, not counting the military, declined in June for the fourth consecutive month, to 10 percent from 10.1 percent in May. The June rate was the lowest since the 9.9 percent recorded last August. The total number of people with jobs rose by 1.2 million from May to June, one of the largest monthly gains on record, and the number of payroll jobs increased by nearly 350,000.

President Reagan today underlined his concern about the investigation of his 1980 campaign by interrupting a meeting of his senior staff and dictating an order that every Administration worker, ''including me,'' cooperate fully. ''We want the truth,'' Mr. Reagan was quoted as saying in a detailed description issued by the White House of the President's sudden visit to the routine morning meeting of his ranking assistants as they gathered across the hall from the Oval Office. ''In view of all that's been going on, I thought they should hear it directly from me,'' Mr. Reagan later told reporters, and promised to take ''whatever action should be taken,'' including staff dismissals, if wrongdoing was uncovered. Orchestration Is Denied The Federal Bureau of Investigation and a Congressional committee have begun inquiries into the 1980 Reagan campaign's possession of some of President Carter's private papers, which campaign aides used in preparing Mr. Reagan for a televised debate with Mr. Carter.

After his visit to the Soviet Union, Chancellor Helmut Kohl is said to believe that Yuri V. Andropov would like to improve relations with the United States and that Moscow might make a counteroffer this fall at the stalled talks in Geneva on mediumrange missiles. According to one of the Chancellor's closest aides, the Soviet leader told Mr. Kohl that there was still ''a margin of flexibility'' in Moscow's negotiating position and that he was interested in sealing an accord with the United States before the December deadline for the deployment of new American medium-range missiles in West Germany, Britain and Italy. While offering no specific concessions, Mr. Andropov apparently wanted to persuade Mr. Kohl that Moscow was not blocking a Geneva accord, according to the aide, who asked not to be named. ''We can't say that there will be a result in Geneva,'' said this official, who took part in the Moscow talks. ''But they haven't decided that there will be no result.''

During the last two weeks, this summer's blockbuster movie ''Return of the Jedi'' has been stolen six times, from theaters in three states and in Britain. The movie industry is certain that the objective in each case was to turn these 35-millimeter prints into illegal home video cassettes to be shipped around the world. The latest such incident took place Thursday night, when two thieves in clown masks stole a print of the movie at gunpoint from a theater in Santa Maria, Calif. Earlier, thieves broke down theater doors in Hastings, England, and Sherman Oaks, Calif., to get the gray metal film cans. In South Carolina, the movie was inexplicably missing, and in Overland Park, Kan., a projectionist was confronted in his theater's parking lot at midnight by an armed robber who forced him to return to the movie house and surrender the film. The police in South Carolina, acting on a tip, found the missing print on a country road two days later with its seals still intact. In a second theft in England, an incomplete print was taken from a small theater.

A New Jersey appeals court ruled unanimously yesterday that the removal of a feeding tube from a mentally incompetent, gravely ill woman would have ''constituted homicide'' and violated a fundamental medical principle to ''do no harm.'' ''In our view,'' the Appellate Division of State Superior Court said, ''we regard it as the authorization of euthanasia.'' In reversing a lower-court order intended to end the life of the woman, 84-year-old Claire C. Conroy, the three-judge appeals panel said the ''trial judge had erred in holding that a noncomatose, nonbrain-dead patient not facing imminent death and not maintained by any life-support machine and not able to speak for herself, should be painfully put to death through dehydration and starvation.'' The court said there was a clear difference between the case of Miss Conroy and that of Karen Ann Quinlan, whose removal from a respirator was authorized by the New Jersey Supreme Court in a landmark decision in 1976. Miss Quinlan survived the removal and remains comatose.

''Time longer than rope,'' goes a favorite Creole proverb here. The saying, meaning that sooner or later justice prevails, has taken on a new timeliness for Belize, which finally seems to be inching toward a settlement of an old border dispute with Guatemala. A settlement is crucial to the future of this small country, barely two years old and suffering badly from underdevelopment. Belize needs investment and increased revenues to develop public services - the major source of drinkable water in its Caribbean resorts comes from rain barrels, and the streets of this ramshackle city degenerate into little more than dirt tracks in many places. It needs to develop its underpopulated farmland and exploit its potential oil deposits.

The Salvadoran Government today asked President Reagan's envoy for Central America, Richard B. Stone, to seek the participation of its leftist opponents in elections scheduled for December if he meets with them in Costa Rica. Mr. Stone flew to San Jose this afternoon amid speculation that he was going there to meet leaders of the leftist political and guerrilla coalitions fighting the Government. ''Above all, we would like to talk to them about participation in elections, because that is the ideal way to have peace,'' said Francisco Jose Guerrero, a top aide of the Provisional President, Alvaro Magana. ''We can't talk about peace and just stay in our chairs, we have to seek peace.''

A member of El Salvador's Human Rights Commission drove out to the western province of Sonsonate in February and then hiked to a river near Las Hojas, where the blood of 18 murdered peasants was still caked on nearby leaves. Cristobal Aleman's inquiry into the deaths last February at Las Hojas received much attention because it was one of the first times the Government had acted swiftly to investigate killings that might have involved the army. The truth, it seemed, was close at hand, but the tale has taken a twist. The captain who was implicated in the deaths is now head of intelligence at the army base in Sonsonate; the father of one of the dead peasants has been arrested, and Mr. Aleman, after receiving death threats, has a pistol tucked in his waistband.

The martial law administrator, Lieut. Gen. Hussain Ershad, announced today that a general election would be held by March 1985, three years after he seized power in a military coup. In a broadcast speech, General Ershad also said that lower-level elections would be held this December and next February and March. ''We have fulfilled our promise to the nation to return to democracy,'' General Ershad said.

President Ferdinand E. Marcos threatened today to remove Americans from their two military bases here and seek a military pact with the Soviet Union if Congress refused to provide $900 million in rent for the installations. He made his statements in a meeting with a Congressional delegation, and they were made public in a press release.