What was going on when I was born?

WALKING tours of New York have come a long way since 10 years ago, when such institutions as the Municipal Art Society, the Museum of the City of New York and the Friends of Cast Iron Architecture began to take New Yorkers on ordered routes through the city's history and architecture. Today, it is possible to spend almost any weekend scrutinizing New York from the sidewalk. There have been walks through subway tunnels and across archeological digs, and bird's-eye scannings from the tops of tall buildings. The life of such New York writers as Herman Melville may provide the tour's organizing principle - or ghosts, songs, ethnic restaurants, cemetery roll-calls or poisonous plants. Few pastimes develop such a heightened awareness of familiar surroundings. ''An old teapot, used daily, can tell me more of my past than anything I recorded of it,'' Sylvia Townsend Warner has written. ''Continuity, continuity,'' she wrote, ''it is that which we cannot write down, it is that we cannot compass, record or control.'' What survives the annihilating press of time - whether a building or a neighborhood street scene - is patient and revealing.

Alice Daniel, Governor Cuomo's counsel and the only woman among his senior advisers, resigned yesterday. Mr. Cuomo announced that he would nominate Miss Daniel to be a judge on the Court of Claims when a vacancy occurs in January. The Governor said he would appoint Gerald C. Crotty, his first assistant counsel, to replace Miss Daniel, whose resignation takes effect Oct. 15. ''I think every lawyer who has ever been a litigator wants to be a judge,'' Miss Daniel said. ''When you've been in the position of being the advocate, of urging a decision, you want to make the decisions. It's something I've always thought about.''

Relations between Washington and Moscow have grown noticeably cooler in recent days, but on Wall Street the chill has helped heat up the sluggish stocks of military contractors. The shooting down last week of a South Korean jetliner by a Soviet fighter as well as the accelerated violence in Lebanon have focused renewed attention on the military needs of the United States. Many analysts think the jetliner incident is likely to strengthen President Reagan's hand in negotiating with Congress over increased military spending for programs such as the MX missile. Others, however, are more skeptical about whether the incident will have a lasting impact on the arms industry.

Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan today criticized banks and the rest of the financial industry for the present level of interest rates. ''There doesn't seem to be a good reason - or should I say there doesn't seem to be any good excuse - for those rates to be as high as they are,'' he said in a speech here. ''Real interest rates - that is nominal rates minus inflation - remain unusually high.'' Mr. Regan, in renewing a complaint about financial institutions that he expressed earlier this year, was reflecting the Administration's concern that persistently high long-term interest rates could weaken the nation's economic recovery next year.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz held a two-hour meeting today with Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko to confront him directly with the demand that the Soviet Union accept blame for the shooting down of a Korean Air Lines plane last week. Later, Mr. Shultz said the Soviet Foreign Minister's responses to him were ''totally unacceptable.'' Mr. Shultz's voice seemed to rise in anger as he said after the meeting that Mr. Gromyko's explanations to him were ''even more unsatisfactory'' than Mr. Gromyko's public statement on Wednesday. That public statement had already drawn Mr. Shultz's ire because Mr. Gromyko had again suggested that the plane was on an American espionage mission and that the Soviet Union had the right to shoot down any intruding aircraft. NATO Aides Discuss Moves Late tonight, Mr. Shultz and the foreign ministers from the other 15 North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations met to discuss steps to voice collective indignation against the Soviet Union over the airliner incident.

The folk wisdom that urges you to smile your troubles away has received new support from scientific research to be published today. Just the act of flexing facial muscles into the characteristic expressions of joy or other emotions, the researchers found, can produce effects on the nervous system that normally go with those emotions. The findings may have implications for the art of acting, the effectivness of advertising, the treatment of mental illness and the understanding of brain function, according to Dr. Paul Ekman, a psychologist at the University of California at San Francisco. 'Quite Surprising' Findings Dr. Ekman, the principal researcher, believes the study does offer insight into brain function. He thinks it shows that the mechanics of facial muscle movement are closely tied to the autonomic nervous system, which controls heart rate, breathing and other vital involuntary functions.

A photo caption in Metropolitan Report yesterday incorrectly identified a witness who testified before the Governor's Commission on Shoreham. He is Dr. Peter Kroeger, a proponent of the nuclear plant on Long Island.

An enormous traffic in fraudulent documents among illegal aliens in this country threatens to defeat the intention of major legislation now pending in Congress to change the immigration system, according to officials in this border state and in Washington. According to testimony before a Senate hearing by a convicted counterfeiter of such documents, as many as five million bogus credentials allowing illegal aliens to get work, attend school and receive various benefits may be in circulation. These include fraudulent Social Security cards, birth certificates, driver's licenses and passports. In a report issued in May, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations estimated that ''the economic impact of false identification fraud on government and commerce'' may exceed $24 billion annually. Supporters Cite Controls In Texas, which shares 1,250 of the 1,952 miles of border between the United States and Mexico, a study commission concluded in an interim report on immigration policy in June that the pending Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1983 could not work so long as document abuse was so widespread.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Amanda Burden were robbed at gunpoint yesterday evening near Gracie Mansion while on their way to meet Mayor Koch, a spokesman for the police said. The spokesman, Sgt. Raymond O'Donnell, said the 39-year-old Democratic Senator and Mrs. Burden, the socialite, were walking on East End Avenue near 84th Street when two men, one of them armed with a pistol, got out of a parked car and assaulted the couple. Pistol Against Throat The man with the gun pressed the pistol against Senator Dodd's throat and took his wallet, containing an unknown amount of cash and several credit cards, Sergeant O'Donnell said. The Senator was not injured.

Hearing aids have never been something that people want to be seen wearing. But when President Reagan wore one in public for the first time Wednesday, the industry that makes the devices got a boost in its long battle for public acceptance. In fact, only 12.4 percent of the nation's more than 20 million hearing- impaired people wear hearing aids, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. What the President now carries in his ear is the latest in technology built by Starkey Laboratories of Minneapolis, one of the leading makers of hearing aids in the United States.

Business executives are planning to cut spending for expansion and modernization this year by 2.3 percent, after adjustment for inflation, the Commerce Department reported today. The figure, based on a survey conducted in July and August, is more optimistic than previous Commerce Department reports this year. The department said its April-May survey showed that capital spending would be down 3.1 percent from last year, and one at the beginning of the year showed a 3.8 percent decline, after adjustment for inflation. At the end of last year, the estimate was a grim 5.2 percent drop.

Charges that a Brooklyn man raped four women and tried to rape a fifth have been dismissed by a judge who said his ruling was mandated because the Brooklyn District Attorney's office had not been ready to try the case within the required six months. The prosecution delays were not the type that could be attributed to ''exceptional circumstances'' and thus exempt from the six-month requirement, Acting Justice Albert Tomei of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn said in a decision that became known yesterday. A spokesman for the District Attorney, Elizabeth Holtzman, said of the ruling: ''The court made a novel interpretation of the law. We disagree with that interpretation and intend to appeal.'' The spokesman, Mara Neville, declined to say how the interpretation was ''novel'' or to provide any other comment.