What was going on when I was born?

Saudi Arabia is ''seriously studying'' the purchase of a marketing network abroad to sell oil products from its new refineries, the oil minister, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, said in an interview. The plan was confirmed by the industry minister, Ghazi al-Gosaibi, in a separate interview. Neither official would be more specific, but both expressed considerable enthusiasm for idea. During an interview Tuesday at his office here, Sheik Yamani also said that oil prices, depressed by the current worldwide oversupply, would begin increasing gradually.

Beset by slumping sales, money-losing small cars and intense competition from Japanese imports, Chevrolet has been the most troubled of General Motors' five automobile divisions. Within a year, though, the division plans to strike back in the small-car market with what it describes as competitively priced, profitable, high-quality products. But, in a break with the past, the new cars will come from Japan or be made in this country under Japanese supervision. In preparation for the new cars, the division dropped the ''USA-1'' slogan from its ad campaign of the last few years.

The Fortune Systems Corporation, the increasingly troubled Silicon Valley manufacturer of office computer systems, said yesterday that its board had forced Gary B. Friedman, its founder and chairman, to resign. For Fortune, the management change followed six months of mounting customer complaints about technical problems with its computers. It also comes in the midst of a shakeout in the crowded and intensely competitive personal computer sector. Fortune, based in Belmont, Calif., had been profitable in late 1982 and during the first quarter of this year. And its initial stock offering in March raised $112 million. But Fortune began losing money in the second quarter as customers became more and more dissatisfied.

The stock market recorded a strong gain in heavy trading yesterday as investors reacted to an array of positive factors. A late surge of buying propelled the Dow Jones industrial average, which was ahead only fractionally throughout most of the morning, 13.51 points, to 1,250.20. The index had recorded five consecutive losses before Tuesday's 5.39 advance. Volume on the Big Board climbed to 101.7 million shares from 90.3 million on Tuesday.

Supporters of a comprehensive immigration bill have boasted that they were taking a bipartisan or nonpartisan approach. But Tuesday's indefinite postponement of Congressional action on the bill illustrates the perils of underestimating the political importance of a powerful lobby. The Speaker of the House, Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., announced that the bill would not go to the floor for a vote this year because of strong opposition from Hispanic Americans. Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus today took credit for killing the bill, which they fear would increase job discrimination against members of ethnic and racial minority groups. Under the bill, employers who knowingly hired illegal aliens would be subject to civil and criminal penalties.

Already strapped down on a wheeled stretcher with intravenous tubes inserted into the veins of his arms, James David Autry came within minutes of meeting his date with the executioner's needle early on this sultry autumn morning in East Texas. The witnesses were ready to enter the tiny green-walled execution room at the state penitentiary here. The 29- year-old inmate had bid telephone goodbyes to his mother and brother, taken a last meal of hamburger and french fries and voluntarily placed himself on the stretcher. At one minute after midnight a lethal dose of poison would have been pumped into his body and he would have died for murdering a food-store clerk with a shot between the eyes rather than paying for a six-pack of beer in 1980.

Standing ovations are unusual in the General Assembly, which in the last 10 days has been addressed by 66 heads of state, foreign ministers and others. Today, the 67th speaker, President Belisario Betancur of Colombia, brought delegates to their feet with a highly personal and philosophical address. Mr. Betancur quoted Nehru, recounted personal experiences of poverty, made references to dragonflies and talked about the face of God. Some United Nations delegates called Mr. Betancur's speech poetic. But its message was basically political; he contended that the superpowers' pursuit of ''their own, sometimes warped, interest'' threatened to drag the rest of the world into war. He asked them to stand aside while regional groups sought ways to end the conflicts in Central America.

Slithery knee-length tunics slide over narrow pants in the lightest of woolen fabrics at Gianni Versace. Over them go thin loose coats, all in navy, white or a striped combination of the two. They present a distinctive variant on the ubiquitous spring suit. At Laura Biagiotti, mannequins raced down the runway in short knitted cashmere dresses with comfortably deep armholes and ribbed scarfs around the neck. The dresses, scarfs and matching tights are all a bright, cheerful red. Luciano Soprani shows widely flaring skirts with his tailored suit jackets and uses a lot of asymmetric cuts for his suede and wool tops.

New York financial institutions are paying at least a percentage point more than banks in other parts of the country to attract customers to newly deregulated certificates of deposit, according to a nationwide survey released yesterday. According to The Bank Rate Monitor's survey of five major markets, the first since C.D.'s were deregulated last Saturday, the average introductory rate offered in New York City was 10.45 percent. The next highest rate, offered in Detroit, was 9.37 percent, followed by 9.33 percent in Los Angeles, 9.21 in Chicago and 9.17 percent in Philadelphia. Nationwide, The Monitor said, the average rate was 9.48 percent.

A federal appeals court today removed a major obstacle to the resumption of the international negotiations needed to refinance Argentina's huge foreign debt and to keep fresh loans flowing into the country. The court stripped a local judge of jurisdiction over a case that had effectively blocked the signing of refinancing agreements for the $40 billion debt. Without those agreements, foreign banks have been unwilling for the past week to pay out new loans needed by Argentina to keep up with interest payments. More than $500 million in loans have been held up.

Lech Walesa, the founder of Poland's Solidarity labor union, was awarded the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize today for his struggle for workers' rights. The Norwegian Nobel Committee's citation described Mr. Walesa as an ''inspiration and an example'' and as ''an exponent of the active longing for peace and freedom which exists, in spite of unequal conditions, unconquered in all the peoples of the world.'' (In Warsaw, there were public expressions of happiness. At a railroad station, crowds burst into applause when the announcement was broadcast on television. The Government suggested that the award had been made for political reasons. Page A10.

In New Haven, parent-teacher associations have raised money to hire art and music teachers and librarians. In Newark, the Ann Street School stocked a room full of computers, and the Harriet Tubman School bought new math and social studies textbooks, thanks to their local P.T.A.'s. And the Lime Kiln School in Rockland County has a playground as big as a football field because the P.T.A. raised $11,000. Educators and leaders of parent associations in the New York metropolitan area agree: Federal and state cuts in school aid in the last three years have spurred a voluntarism that has sent out parents and children in unprecedented numbers to raise money for their public schools. P.T.A. Leader Sees Dangers Yet while the fund-raising efforts are welcomed by most school administrators, they are also causing new concerns. Some educators worry that the growing reliance on such gifts for basic classroom needs means that generally poorer schools with weak parent organizations are falling further behind.