What was going on when I was born?

The Environmental Protection Agency said today that it had found unexpected leaking of chemicals at the Love Canal in Niagara Falls, N.Y., calling into question last year's Federal declaration that the area was safe to live in. The agency said a ''total review'' was needed of the scientific data amassed by the agency last year and used as the basis for the declaration that the area - a block and a half to six blocks from the contaminated canal - was habitable. The canal, where thousands of tons of toxic chemical wastes were dumped in the 1940's and 1950's, was declared a Federal emergency area in 1980. Hundreds of families were moved from their homes in 1978 and 1980.

A caption accompanying a photograph of the Avon Half Marathon in some editions of Sunday's sports section misidentified the runner shown behind the leader. She was Laurie Binder.

Gordon Peter Getty got there the classic way. He had wealthy parents. Sam M. Walton did it by selling things cheap. J.R. Simplot did it with potatoes, Robert Vesco fled with millions. All did what most Americans only dream about doing - they struck it rich - and they all show up on the second annual Forbes 400 list, a gossipy and not scrupulously precise ranking of the richest people in the country compiled for the latest issue of Forbes magazine.

Eastern Airlines' chairman, Frank Borman, urged employees in a taped message yesterday to accept a 15 percent cut in wages by Nov. 1 and another 5 percent cut in labor costs on Jan. 1, and warned them that they could be voting for their jobs. The three major unions representing most of the 37,500 employees have already indicated they would reject the request, and two reaffirmed that rejection yesterday. Mr. Borman reminded employees in a message taped Sunday night that he was speaking to them about 26 hours after Continental Air Lines had filed for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code. He said at the end of his message that ''in my estimation, you will be voting on your job.'' The message was played to most of the airline's employees yesterday.

The former chief of staff of the Environmental Protection Agency charged today that the Office of Management and Budget improperly promoted industry's efforts to influence the agency's rulemaking. John E. Daniel, who was chief of staff to the agency's former Administrator, Anne McGill Burford, testified before a Congressional investigative committee. He said that the budget office had tried to dictate regulations to the agency, threatened reprisals, urged that cost factors be built into health rules when the law prohibited them, and showed proposed rule changes to officials of the industries being regulated before the changes were available to the public. Christopher C. DeMuth, the budget office's assistant administrator for information and regulatory affairs, said that the office occasionally did discuss environmental rules with affected industries to help formulate decisions.

The Senate Commerce Committee today tentatively approved legislation delaying a plan by the Federal Communications Commission to impose a telephone ''access fee'' on the nation's residences and small businesses Jan. 1. The bill, which is expected to win final committee approval by the end of the week, imposes a two-year moratorium on the commission's plan to replace a subsidy long paid by long-distance users with a new monthly charge to be paid by all telephone customers. The fee would be paid to local telephone companies to cover the cost of access to long-distance circuits.

''Under the Democrats, we never lost the America's Cup.'' - Bob Neuman, director of communications for the Democratic National Committee. (B6:1.)

TO spend two weeks in Sicily sampling its food is to capture the flavor of its history. Just as traces of the Mediterranean crossroad's many invaders can be perceived through its arts, crafts and architecture and in the music, dialect and physiognomy of its people, so its cooking reflects their influences. Occupied by Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Swabians, Spaniards and Frenchmen, the island has evolved a cuisine that not only includes recipes taken intact from foreign kitchens but that also often combines the influences of several countries in a single dish. Consider, for example, couscous prepared with fish instead of lamb or mutton, as it is in North Africa. That seemingly unlikely dish is a specialty of Trapani. A picturesque area with windmills and wide, white beds of drying sea salt, Trapani makes a specialty of couscous (often spelled there as cuscusu, kuskus or cuscus) con pesce. The North African semolina that gives couscous its name is simmered over fish stock aromatic with cinnamon and cloves. Pasta con sarde, thick spaghetti or bucatini with sardines, is an all-Mediterranean dish, based on Italian pasta with fresh sardines that are standard in every country around the sea. The sauce includes the Greco-Arabic sweet accents of pine nuts, raisins or currants, olive oil, parsley and fennel, cloves and cinnamon. The Normans brought with them their dried salt codfish, stokfisk - stoccafisso in Italian - that is now a mainstay.

The House of Representatives, by a surprisingly large 53-vote margin, defeated a bill today that would have cleared the way for construction of underground pipelines to transport coal. The vote, a major victory for railroads, which were joined by farmers and environmentalists, was regarded as ending any chance that coal-slurry legislation will be enacted before 1985 at the earliest. Nine pipelines now on sponsors' drawing boards to carry coal from mines to electric utility plants are unlikely to be built without the emiment domain authority contained in the bill. That authority would let the slurry companies lay their pipelines on private property without the consent of the owners provided the companies paid fair compensation to the property owners.

Frances Bernice Schreuder of New York was found guilty tonight of first-degree murder for having persuaded her son to murder her father in order to secure her inheritance. The state district court jury of seven women and five men deliberated three hours before returning the verdict, which carries a penalty of death or life imprisonment.

Economic Analysis The world economy today, as it enters a second decade of coping with much more costly energy, can expect an uneven recovery, with the United States moving ahead more briskly than its industrial partners or the countries of the third world. And the enormous debts that oil-importing nations have piled up jeopardize the world's financial security. But the world has indeed coped with the tumult of the 1970's, although it is gripped with a residue of broad structural unemployment, and the world's leaders have learned some important lessons. The oil price explosion and the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74 dealt an unprecedented and lasting shock to the world economy - a shock that, paradoxically, brought both inflation and recession. A worldwide economic slump ensued, in large measure a result of the efforts over the decade to fight the oil-induced inflation. The slump, in turn, led to an oil glut in the early 1980's, driving oil prices back down.

THE factors that affect retail wine prices in this country are sometimes as complicated as those that determine the quality of the product itself, and this year the equation is more arcane than ever. Industry observers generally agree that bargains for American consumers on both European and American wines are the best in at least a decade, especially among the so-called everyday drinking wines that sell in the $3 to $6 range. Opinions differ, however, about whether prices will decline further. ''It is hard to predict,'' said Mario Daniele of C. Daniele & company, a distributor of European and California wines. ''I think it is a question of European economics, pure and simple.'' Mr. Daniele suggested that many French and Italian wine makers are nervous about the economic situations in their own countries and are eager to sell wines in the United States, for which they receive relatively stable dollars instead of francs or lira.