What was going on when I was born?

An American delegate to the United Nations encouraged members today to consider removing the organization from New York if they thought the United States was failing in its obligations as host country. The delegate, Charles M. Lichenstein, was responding to a Soviet charge that the American action in denying Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko permission to land at Kennedy and Newark Airports raised questions about the suitability of the United States as the host nation. ''If in the judicious determination of the members of the United Nations they feel they were not welcome and treated with the hostly consideration that is their due,'' Mr. Lichenstein said, ''the United States strongly encourages member states to seriously consider removing themselves and this organization from the soil of the United States.'' No New Policy, Mission Says ''We will put no impediment in your way,'' Mr. Lichenstein said, ''and we will be at dockside bidding you a farewell as you set off into the sunset.''

Marc Rich, one of the world's leading commodity traders, was indicted yesterday by a Federal grand jury on charges that he and a partner had evaded $48 million in income taxes. Prosecutors said it was the biggest tax- fraud indictment in history. The two men were also accused of buying oil from Iran after trade with that nation had been declared illegal in response to the Nov. 4, 1979, seizure of American hostages. Mr. Rich, a reclusive multimillionaire, and his partner, Pincus Green, were charged with 51 counts of tax evasion, rackeetering and fraud. Through a spokesman, both men declared themselves innocent.

THE setting in the Cuyabena Nature Reserve in Ecuador is a biologist's paradise: more than 500 species of birds, spiny palms that are the center of a self-contained ecosystem, vines like the ones Tarzan swung on, jumping piranhas, blind river dolphins, elusive manatees, quicksilver squirrel monkeys, iridescent- blue morpho butterflies, indefatigable leaf- cutting ants, 400-pound fish, frogs, snakes, lizards, turtles, wild pigs, giant rodents, jaguars and prehistoric caimans that fill the night air with plaintive territorial grunts. ''It is said that the rain forest has more eyes than leaves,'' remarked Eduardo Asanza, who has lived at Cuyabena for six years, studying caimans, and knows most of the animals by their sounds and the traces they leave on land and water. Dr. Asanza, the only scientist working full time in this lush region of the Upper Amazon Basin, is known among citified Ecuadoreans as ''the crazy biologist'' for having chosen to live like a jungle boy in the remote rain forest, a full day's ride by motorized dugout canoe from the nearest road. When his mother died last year, it took five days for a helicopter to find him. He eats like a native Indian: mainly bananas and manioc boiled and mashed into a milky porridge, papaya, grapelike cecropia fruits, fish, and occasionally the meat of wild animals like monkeys, pigs, capybara, snakes and caterpillars.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Thayer has ordered the armed forces to plan for expanded operations in Central America and has placed new emphasis on projecting American military power to the Persian Gulf, according to Defense Department memorandums. Mr. Thayer has ended a long summer of debate inside the Defense Department with the first critical decisions in a long process of shaping the 1985 military budget. The budget will be refined by the White House during the fall and be presented to Congress in January, where it will be subject to vigorous debate and certain revision. Mr. Thayer's decisions appeared to reflect President Reagan's pledge to ''rearm America'' and to project American military power abroad while recognizing the political reality of growing resistance in Congress to ever higher military spending. More for Central America All of the services were instructed to add funds for operations in the Southern Command, meaning Central and South America, and to take part in a study to be led by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on ''force structure and basing requirements.''

A listing in the The Guide last Sunday for a concert of William Zucker's work gave an incorrect date. The recital will be given at 8 P.M. today at Carnegie Recital Hall.

THE school bells that are welcoming 5-year-olds to the beginning of their formal education in public schools around the country this fall could be ringing for increasing numbers of 4-year-olds in coming years. There is growing national interest in lowering the age for entering school. To do so would be a major change in an educational system that until now has usually regarded the younger children as suitable candidates for nursery schools and day care centers, but not for regular educational programs. Central to any such change is the question of whether the needs of 4-year-olds are best served through work or play; that is, whether it is appropriate to make academic demands of 4-year-olds.

Two United States Navy ships off Beirut fired dozens of shells today in support of Lebanese Army units defending the town of Suk al Gharb on a ridge overlooking Beirut. It was the first direct military support of the Lebanese Army by United States forces. The cruiser Virginia and the destroyer John Rodgers, both guided missile warships, moved to within nearly a mile of shore to fire five-inch shells at Syrian-backed Druse militiamen and Palestinian guerrillas who were attacking army positions. The bombardment, which began in the morning and continued in the afternoon, was explained by American spokesmen here and in Washington as necessary to help the Lebanese troops defend Suk al Gharb and thereby to safeguard the United States Marines, other contingents of the multinational peacekeeping force and other Americans in Beirut.

American involvement in the Lebanese crisis took a significant new turn today when the United States Navy began firing its guns not to defend American soldiers under attack but to support the operations of a Lebanese Army unit. Today's naval bombardment by two American ships in support of Lebanese soldiers trying to hold onto their positions in the mountaintop village of Suk al Gharb marked the first time American forces had acted under the new rules of engagement given them by President Reagan last Tuesday. The President granted the Marines in Beirut the right to order air and sea strikes to defend the four-nation peacekeeping force and Lebanese Army troops. In elaborating on these rules of engagement, the White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, said at the time, ''If the marines are in danger because the Lebanese Army is in difficulty, the marines are authorized to defend themselves.'' As for the marines' being in any direct danger as a result of today's fighting, the Marine spokesman, Maj. Robert Jordan, stated unequivocally, ''There was no direct threat.''

Michael West is not a steelworker, nor is he a British Steel Corporation executive. But nobody blinks an eye when he wanders through the company's Rotherham Steel Works northeast of this sprawling industrial city, pausing to chat with anyone who cares to speak to him. The 44-year-old Canon West is an industrial chaplain, one of more than 300 British priests and ministers involved in a 40-year-old effort to bridge the rarely crossed chasm between organized religion and life in the factory. The chaplains do pastoral work with workers who are ill or have personal problems, and they have been especially busy during the recent economic crises in this country.

It is unusual enough to find in the City Hall rotunda a couple of freshly painted antique fire-alarm posts - blazing in vivid vermilion against the muted, marble setting - but the surprises continue upstairs. Along with a green-and-white illuminated BMT lamp, a dark blue ''Interborough Rapid Transit Company'' sign and a red granite horse trough that has yet to arrive, the fire posts are transforming the seat of government into a turn-of-thecentury street scene. They are together for an exhibit of objects, drawings and photographs called ''Furnishing the Streets: 1902- 1922,'' the first such public show anyone can remember being held in City Hall.

American Roman Catholic and Lutheran theologians are preparing to announce agreement on the major religious issue that divided Lutherans and Roman Catholics nearly 500 years ago. The agreement is on the meaning of justification, the doctrine that describes how sinful humanity can be considered righteous in the sight of God and obtain salvation. Historically, Catholics emphasized the role of good works and sacraments as aids to salvation. Followers of Martin Luther stressed faith alone.

PUT simply, the project would be the biggest endeavor in the history of pure science, a colossus that would rival the building of the pyramids and the construction of the Panama Canal. A Nobel laureate called it ''one of the most ambitious projects ever conceived by our species.'' The goal of American physicists is to build an atom smasher whose circular tunnel will stretch anywhere from 60 to 120 miles around. The proposed machine, whose site has yet to be selected, would push protons to energies 40 times greater than those currently attainable by the most powerful accelerator on earth. Just to plan for the machine, known as the Superconducting Super Collider, or S.S.C., the Federal Department of Energy intends to spend $150 million to $200 million. Its total cost might run from $2 billion to $4 billion.