What was going on when I was born?

Ashland Oil made payments totaling $17 million to a former Abu Dhabi official in an unsuccessful effort to retain an oil contract, according to company officials. They said the payments, in 1980 and 1981, had gone to Sadiq Attia, who had connections with Abu Dhabi National Oil, but his exact position is now unclear. The payments are being investigated by two Congressional subcommittees. (Page A1.) Brazil will not be allowed an extension on its July 15 deadline to repay $400 million in bridge loans, according to the Bank for International Settlements. (D7.) Throughout Brazil, as the I.M.F. pushes for tougher austerity measures, workers have been staging strikes with the message that any more austerity will be intolerable. (D1.)

From the September day when he took over the helm at Pan American World Airways two years ago, C. Edward Acker has had to scramble to buy the time he needed to restructure the company. As losses mounted, scaring off travel agents and passengers who feared the company's demise, it looked at times like Mr. Acker might be losing the battle. But with the economy recovering and airline traffic suddenly soaring, Mr. Acker now appears to be winning his fight. Pan Am's passenger loads are rising, and the airline's cash flow is now positive. Even employee morale appears to have turned around. ''We have a much stronger company now,'' said Mr. Acker, who is chairman, president and chief executive officer at Pan Am.

AS hordes of mosquitoes once again descend upon Americans, their numbers swollen in the Northeast and the West by heavy spring rains, reports of ingenious new methods to control this pest promise relief to the evening stroller and porch sitter, the early morning jogger and the sleeper tortured by the insistent hum of a female mosquito in search of a meal. The last decade has given birth to scores of imaginative techniques to battle this 100-million-year-old survivor of countless swats and sprays: from garlic to genetically engineered sterility to the breeding of cannibalistic mosquitoes that do not bite people but devour dozens of the kind that do. Unfortunately, few of these proposals have withstood the ultimate test of preventing people from being bitten. As one researcher wryly put it, ''It kind of makes you long for the days of DDT.'' But even as they have failed thus far to develop powerful new antimosquito ammunition to replace old-fashioned, unpleasant repellent, scientists around the country have learned a great deal about what makes the mosquito tick: its breeding habits, attractions to people, and the workings of its sensory systems, all of which hold the promise of leading one day to something more effective than a belated slap and the blood stain that is evidence of its futility.

The head of the Bank for International Settlements said Brazil would not get an extension for a repayment due Friday. Page D7. RIO DE JANIERO, July 11 - While a negotiating team from the International Monetary Fund is in Brasilia pressing Government leaders to adhere to a strict economic austerity program, workers around the country have been staging wildcat strikes to say they can stand no more. Auto workers in Sao Paulo and metalworkers and oil workers in several cities ended a four-day walkout today in favor of a national day of protest on July 21 that is to take the form of a nationwide strike.

WHEN school districts across the country were searching in the 1970's for ways to help their students learn more, many turned to competency tests as a tool for prodding performance and measuring progress. Today, public school systems in 36 states use minimum competency tests to measure how much students have learned. The schools use these results to determine whether students need remedial education, whether they should be promoted, and, in some cases, whether they should be denied high school diplomas. Some educators, politicians and parents praise such tests as essential for guarding the quality of education. ''It's an invaluable tool,'' said Jim Skelly, a Republican state representative in Arizona who has been a leader of conservatives seeking to revise education in that state. Mr. Skelly has two sons, both of whom went to private schools.

The State Senate will reconvene Tuesday to complete the work of the 206th legislative session, taking up measures already approved in the Assembly, including a $1.25 billion transportation bond issue. The Senate will also consider aid to 45 school districts and tax incentives to encourage job development. It is also expected to approve a number of Governor Cuomo's appointees, including Sidney Schwartz as Inspector General of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Edmund B. Wutzer as Director of Probation and Donald Chesworth Jr. as Superintendent of state police. Longtime Albany officials said they could not recall a session quite like this one. Michael J. Del Giudice, the secretary to Governor Cuomo who for many years was a top aide to Democrats in the Assembly, said, ''It's certainly unique, the Senate coming back in a cleanup kind of session after the other house has left.''

TWO young scientists hunkered over computer terminals last autumn to explore the earth's last unmapped regions - vast stretches of ocean floor never surveyed by ships. Using information from a now-defunct satellite, the two geologists, Tim Dixon and Michael Parke, are today generating the most accurate maps ever made of ocean floor topography. Among the new features they have found are a plateau the size of California, dozens of underwater volcanoes, evidence of ancient fracture zones and swales of ocean crust with odd gravitational characteristics. None appear on conventional maps of ocean floors. And while their ''expedition'' never carried them beyond the gates of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Earth and Space Sciences Division here, it has significantly advanced the science of marine geology.

With yields for Treasury notes and bonds near their highest levels of the year, investors shunned the credit markets yesterday as they awaited testimony by Paul A. Volcker that might shed light on the direction of interest rates. In advance of Mr. Volcker's testimony this week before the Senate Banking Committee, which will hold hearings on his reappointment as the Federal Reserve Board's chairman, interest rates barely moved in light trading of government securities. Traders and investors also said they were awaiting indications later this week of any decisions on monetary policy taken at today's meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, a Federal Reserve panel that sets monetary policy. 8 1/2 Percent Since December Although much of the discussion in the financial markets has focused on the likelihood of an increase in the discount rate that the Fed charges on loans to banks, many Fed watchers warned that it could decide to raise short-term rates without increasing the discount rate from the 8 1/2 percent level at which it has remained since last December.

Subway motormen who drive too fast have contributed to a recent rash of derailments in New York City, a consultant studying the accidents said yesterday, and the Transit Authority has begun using radar guns to catch violators. ''About one-third of the motormen are what I call cowboys,'' said the consultant, Harry M. Williamson, a retired executive of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, a major Western railroad with headquarters in San Francisco. ''They come barreling into stations and make a big brake application. They are wearing out the brake shoes, providing a less comfortable ride for passengers and putting more stress on the tracks.''

Sales at seven major New York City department stores rose an average of 14.5 percent in June, the biggest gain in more than two years, a spot-check showed yesterday. Sales at both the city stores and at suburban branches for the same retailers rose an average of 15.1 percent compared with June of last year. That was the largest gain since January.

Ashland Oil Inc. made payments totaling $17 million in 1980 and 1981 to a former Abu Dhabi official in an unsuccessful attempt to retain a crude oil contract with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, according to current and former Ashland officials. The payments went to Sadiq Attia, who, according to an Ashland spokesman, was an official of the Government oil company when he first approached Ashland about the deal, but who had left when the payments began. But a Western diplomat in Abu Dhabi said that in 1980 Mr. Attia was still with the company, although he had been assigned to the Ministry of Petroleum. The payments are being studied by two Congressional subcommittees to determine whether they violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits bribery of foreign officials. Representative Timothy E. Wirth, Democrat of Colorado, who heads one of the House subcommittees investigating the Ashland matter, has been critical of attempts to relax enforcement of the foreign bribery law.

American students, by and large, take examinations to get out of school. Japanese take them to get in. One result is that once Japanese students get to college, they can relax. Their life bears little resemblance to the regimen of lectures, seminars, exams and papers that are the pattern in the United States. ''We are supposed to spend two hours preparing for every hour of class,'' said Masato Koiso, a 20-year-old sophomore at Sophia University here, ''but nobody does that. This is the only time that you can take it easy and enjoy life.'' ''You sleep late, and you play a lot of mah-jongg,'' agreed Motoharu Saito, a graduate student at Sophia. In Japan, what is most important is not what a student learns in college but which college he goes to, and that is determined entirely by the score he makes on a one-day battery of tests. This basic fact of life - that every Japanese child who has any hope of going to college must face crucial, detailed, impartial tests of his or her basic academic knowledge - defines what is taught in Japanese schools, shapes the extracurricular activities and determines the way Japanese children spend their free time. There is nothing comparable in the American system of education.