What was going on when I was born?

Because of an editing error, the Market Place column in Business Day on Wednesday incorrectly described the stock that shareholders in the American Telephone and Telegraph Company will receive after its divestiture of seven regional phone companies. For every 10 shares of A.T.& T. now held, shareholders will receive one new share of each regional company. They will also retain their existing Telephone shares.

Two recent Government reports have raised what many experts see as disturbing questions about the ability of Federal banking regulators to identify certain types of bank mismanagement and to compel wayward banks to mend their ways. The reports, issued by the Treasury Department and the House Government Operations Committee, indicate that the two most important Federal banking regulatory agencies - the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Corporation - may be ill- equipped to detect banking crises before they occur or to compel remedial measures. No one questions the integrity of the two agencies. Rather, the issue is whether the banking authorities in an era of deregulated banking need to be better trained - and perhaps more sophisticated, suspicious and aggressive - in dealing not only with loan portfolios and operating results but also with the bankers themselves.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1983 International The Western allies have tentatively agreed to allow Japan to become the second-largest shareholder in the World Bank after the United States. In return, according to banking sources, Japan would be encouraged to increase its financial commitment to the International Development Agency, the World Bank's lending agency for developing nations. (Page D1.)

ABRIGHT blue tent has engulfed part of Lincoln Center, a sign that the Big Apple Circus is back in town for its third holiday season in Damrosch Park. Starting today at 1 and 4 P.M. and continuing through Jan. 2, the European-style one- ring circus, which received this year's Obie Award for achievement in theater, will feature an internationally praised juggler, Francis Brunn. Jim Tinsman will balance on one hand on a high ladder, and Nathalie Enterline will spin, kick and throw a hat and cane in a sort of dance, demonstrating the agility that twice won her world championships in baton twirling. Acrobats will perform, and so will teeter- board, tight-wire and trapeze artists, an Arabian stallion, a seven-piece band and three elephants who stand on their heads.

President Reagan said today that Yuri V. Andropov's announcement of plans to counter NATO missile deployment with new Soviet weapons was at ''sharp variance'' with previous Russian calls for arms agreement. ''While we are dismayed,'' the President said in a four-sentence statement, ''we are determined to renew our efforts to entirely do away with the land- based intermediate-range nuclear missile systems.'' The President, seeking holiday quiet at his mountain ranch near here, was briefed this morning by his national security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, after Moscow's announcement that it planned to increase its nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe, within the Soviet Union and in unspecified ocean areas. Walkout Was Expected The announcement came a day after the Soviet Union broke off the Geneva talks on medium-range nuclear missiles, in what it said was retaliation for the start of deployment of new American missiles in Western Europe.

The companies whose Christmas catalogues inundate the mails every fall, in anticipation of strong retail sales over the holidays, have churned out a record number this year. So many, in fact, that some merchandisers are talking about an ''over-catalogued'' market and a shakeout in the industry. Two years ago, some 4,000 separate consumer catalogues were published. This year, according to the Directory of Mail Order Catalogues, more than 6,500 different consumer catalogues were published. That means that more than five billion catalogues - that's billion, with a ''b'' - reached American consumers this year, an average of 40 to each household.

''Every mother is happy today.'' - Umm Bassam, a Palestinian whose son was freed by Israel. (A12:6.)

ROMAN VISHNIAC sat in his West Side apartment, amid piles of photographs, showcases of Oriental art objects and bookcases of leather-bound scientific tomes in many languages, and filtered from aching memory a saga of danger and triumph in which he outraced the Nazis to make a gripping photographic record of Jewish life and culture before it was obliterated by the Holocaust. From the photographs before him had come the 48 framed enlargements of children with beseeching eyes, of men and women struggling for survival in ghetto streets and hovels, and faces paying homage to God that make up the exhibition called ''A Vanished World'' at the International Center of Photography, Fifth Avenue and 94th Street. Once again Mr. Vishniac was sifting his pictures - he estimates he has 2,000 of the 16,000 he took in the 1930's - for similar exhibitions in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Zurich. A table-size book of his photographs, also called ''A Vanished World,'' has just been published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. In New York, the City Council has passed a resolution praising Mr. Vishniac ''for his many achievements, including his pioneering photography of pre-Holocaust Eastern Europe.''

Unusual security surrounded the White House today as the Secret Service stationed dump trucks loaded with sand at most of the gates. A few blocks away, cars and trucks were used to block the driveways and garage doors at the State Department in response to a reported bomb threat. The new security measures were put in place while President and Mrs. Reagan were spending the Thanksgiving holiday at their ranch near Santa Barbara, Calif. There, the White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, said the new moves were ''not a result of a specific threat against the White House'' but were part of the Secret Service's ''normal review of security measures.''

The Nicaraguan Government has made a series of conciliatory gestures to its domestic critics in an effort to ease tensions and to respond to criticism by some Western European and Latin American nations. Leaders of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, anti-Sandinista political parties, the private sector and the opposition newspaper La Prensa say they have been approached by Sandinista officials with offers of concessions. At the same time, the Sandinista Government was reported to have asked Salvadoran rebel leaders to leave the country. There was speculation among diplomats that these and other reported developments were part of a diplomatic peace effort being worked out among Central American countries.

The Western trading partners have tentatively agreed to a Japanese request that it become the second-largest shareholder in the World Bank after the United States, according to diplomatic sources. The shift, which would displace Britain from the No. 2 spot, would recognize Japan's emergence as the second-largest non-Communist economy in the world after the United States. The move would increase Japan's influence over World Bank lending decisions and add to its prestige, especially among third world countries. In return, Japan would be expected to increase its payments to the International Development Agency, the World Bank's arm that provides low- cost loans to developing nations, these sources said. Talks on funding for the agency for the next three years are scheduled to open here Dec. 9.

Six Israeli soldiers, held prisoner for more than 14 months by the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon, returned home today to a tumultuous, passionate welcome. Crowds of family and friends hugged the returning soldiers, poured champagne on their heads and carried them above the throngs after they flew into Sde Dov Airport near Tel Aviv. In exchange, Israel completed the release of 4,500 Arab prisoners, including some who were serving life sentences for terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. It also closed the Ansar camp, a detention center built in southern Lebanon after the 1982 invasion. Freed in Algeria and Lebanon About 3,400 Arab prisoners were set free in Lebanon, and 1,100 were flown in three Air France jumbo jets to Algeria, the Israeli Army said. The P.L.O.'s archives, seized in West Beirut during the 1982 Israeli invasion, were also returned.