What was going on when I was born?

Fourteen years after the first moon landing, space age textiles are starting to show up in earthbound apparel. Thin thermal fabrics are replacing bulky fleece and down in skiwear. Dancers and athletes are beginning to wear clothing that feels soft and dry even when wet. ''In the future,'' said Lawrence Kuznetz, a bioengineer for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who recently turned to designing sportswear, ''clothing may not only protect you from the environment, but regulate the micro-environment next to the skin.''

The Federal Communications Commission approved a plan yesterday that would add $2 a month to the cost of a residential telephone line, and $6 a month to the cost of business lines, starting in January. The commission's decision, which could be overridden by Congress, is designed to end the nearly 50-year-old practice of using the revenues from long-distance service to subsidize local telephone service, so that its rates could be kept low enough to be affordable by nearly everyone. Growing competition in providing long-distance telephone service, and the coming breakup of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, has made the subsidy an obstacle to lower rates for the competing long-distance carriers. The F.C.C. ruling yesterday orders that the subsidies be phased out after the first of the year. The new line charges, in effect, would convert the subsidies into higher local rates.

Repeal of tax withholding from interest and dividend income became all but certain today after House and Senate conferees approved a compromise bill. The agreement, ending a weeklong deadlock, would repeal a 1982 tax provision requiring corporations, banks and other financial institutions to withhold 10 percent of most interest and dividend payments. Now that the conferees have reached agreement, the bill is expected to win swift approval in both houses of Congress and to be signed by President Reagan. The withholding provision was a key element in the President's tax program enacted last summer and was to have become effective on July 1. But this date was pushed back, first to Aug. 1 and then to Aug. 5, as repeal legislation worked its way through Congress.

The Ford Motor Company reported today that its earnings more than doubled in the second quarter, to $542.2 million, from the period a year earlier. Added to the strong performances of the General Motors Corporation and the Chrysler Corporation, Ford's results brought the combined earnings by the Big Three auto makers to a record $1.89 billion in the quarter, exceeding the previous record of $1.73 billion set in the second quarter of 1977, a boom year for auto sales. For all of 1983, analysts are estimating that the three companies will earn close to $5 billion. Analysts noted that in inflation-adjusted dollars, the $1.89 billion might not exceed the 1977 earnings. But they said that the jump in profits after so long a slump in the auto industry reflected the cost cutting that took place for nearly two years, until auto sales began to turn up last November. Wage and benefit concessions, the first won by the nation's auto industry, were a major factor in the cost cutting.

An article in Business Day last Monday about computer disk drives included an incorrect statement from the Kaypro Corporation on its pricing plan for the Kaypro II personal computer. The company now says the price will not be reduced below the present $1,595.

International Gunmen identified as Armenians stormed the Turkish Ambassador's residence in Lisbon and, after keeping policemen at bay with gunfire for 90 minutes, blew up the building. Seven people died in the terrorist attack -five gunmen, a hostage and a policeman who had entered the buiding during the siege. (Page A1, Column 5.) Fifteen Jews made a pilgrimage from the United States and three other countries to England to pay honor to the woman who rescued them from Germany on the eve of World War II. They came thousands of miles to thank Dorothy de Rothschild, their 88-year-old benefactor. (A1:1-3.)

In the 1850's, when aluminum sold for $545 a pound, Napoleon III used it to serve royalty at state dinners, relegating lesser guests to gold and silver. Later in the century, after two young men hit upon a process for producing the metal in quantity, the price plummeted to 57 cents a pound - a level that made aluminum better suited to soda cans than dinner service. While far less dramatic than a century ago, sharp price fluctuations are still the bane of aluminum manufacturers. Now, as the industry enjoys a sharp upturn after its deepest recession in more than three decades, company executives and industry analysts say that maintaining stable, relatively high prices is crucial to sustain the industry's recovery.

A chart in Business Day on Tuesday with an article about Bell & Howell misstated the company's earnings. It earned $12.1 million in 1978, $26.1 million in 1980 and $21.6 million in 1981; it lost $25.1 million in 1979 and $2.9 million in 1982.

National Public Radio, the federally financed network that provides programs to 281 noncommercial radio stations around the country, will not meet its $500,000 payroll tomorrow unless it can find financial assistance. Among the stations affected would be WNYC in New York City. At a meeting of its board of directors in Washington today, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the agency that disburses Federal funds to public television and radio stations, is expected to decide whether to proceed with a loan to help the network pay off a deficit of $9.1 million - more than one-third of its $26 million budget. If the network cannot or will not meet the corporation's terms and the loan cannot be granted, the network's programs, including its popular daily news magazines ''All Things Considered'' and ''Morning Edition,'' would go off the air. The network would probably be dissolved and subsequently reorganized along different lines by the corporation.

President Reagan's repeated references in his news conference Tuesday to the Soviet Union and Cuba as key sources of unrest in Central America reflected growing frustration over the reaction to his policy at home. As the White House sees it, the public, Congress and the press have failed to appreciate the serious threat posed by Soviet and Cuban interference in the region. It was no accident, Administration officials said today, that Mr. Reagan returned several times at the news conference to the theme. At one point, he ascribed the trouble in Central America to ''revolution exported from the Soviet Union and from Cuba and from others of their allies.'' Later he said, ''If you go to the source'' of violence in the region, ''I think you're talking about the Soviet Union.'' But many legislators continued to express confusion and dissent today over the President's stated policy. The House Speaker, Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., was sharply critical of Mr. Reagan's defense of his policy at the news conference, calling the President's performance inept and ill-informed.

New York's newest tourist attraction, the South Street Seaport, opens officially today as the re-creation of an ancient New York waterfront that, like the rest of the city, never seems to be quite finished. The rejuvenation is lifting the face of three historic blocks near the East River centering on Fulton Street. Despite the panache of a Broadway opening, with a noontime parade from the World Trade Center along Fulton Street to the seaport, speeches by Governor Cuomo and Mayor Koch, and daylong outdoor entertainment until 9 P.M., the area is a work in progress. The sightseer who can remain impervious to the paraphernalia and distraction of construction may enter a handsome scene of the past, with Belgian paving blocks underfoot in streets closed to traffic; tall ships tethered to the piers; lampposts of a design that recalls old New York, circa 1880; ships' kegs as wastebaskets, and buildings - one dates to 1793 - faithful to their past in facade, if occasionally trendy inside. 'The Real Flavor of What It Will Be Like' The special attractions operated by the South Street Seaport Museum, which is charged with maintaining the historical integrity of the 11-block South Street Seaport Historical District, south of the Brooklyn Bridge, are ready to open after a year and half of renovation.

In the first criminal prosecutions stemming from the collapse of the Drysdale Government Securities Corporation last year, two of the company's top officials and a former senior partner in the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen & Company were indicted yesterday. They were charged with defrauding the Chase Manhattan Bank and the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company of $290 million. In essence, they were accused of misrepresenting the worth of Drysdale Government Securities. Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said the firm ''was insolvent the day it opened its doors.'' Its listed assets were transferred back to the company from which it was formed, Mr. Morgenthau said.