What was going on when I was born?

The former administrator of a financially ailing Queens hospital and a monitoring group charge that the hospital admitted patients unnecessarily and gave them treatments they did not need. The administrator, who has been dismissed by the owners of the center, Boulevard Hospital in Long Island City, also charged the hospital improperly withheld refunds due thousands of patients and used hospital employees for the owners' personal chores. ''We admitted patients who weren't sick to keep up occupancy,'' said the former administrator, John Jenkins. ''We'd do anything we could to pack them in,'' he said. ''We'd keep deposits. When you're cash poor, you don't pay back deposits.''

The dirty white Jeep ranch wagon with bullet- proof windows charged through the nearly deserted streets of Tripoli, engine roaring, tires squealing. As it screeched to a stop, it would pitch forward, the doors would pop open and out would step Yasir Arafat, invariably dressed in olive drab, invariably grinning. Often, as the siege of this northern Lebanese city stretched over nearly seven weeks, his eyes were red- rimmed, his face drained; yet he managed to bluster his way through it all. Without the guns or manpower to fend off an attack by Syrian-supported dissidents within the Palestine Liberation Organization, Mr. Arafat mounted a public relations campaign that brought him through the shelling of Tripoli and the nearby refugee camps as the man the world still thought of when it thought of the Palestinians.

A pickup truck packed with explosives blew up outside a French military command post in East Beirut tonight five minutes after a bomb exploded in a crowded hotel bar in the western part of the city. At least 19 people, including a French soldier, were killed in the two blasts and more than 40 were wounded. The explosion at the French post, close to the National Museum on the green line dividing the city's Christian and Moslem areas, seemed to be part of a continuing campaign of violence against the 5,800-man multinational force made up of American marines and French, British and Italian soldiers, according to Arab commentators. Unknown Group Makes Claim A rightist radio station received a call from someone claiming to represent a previously unknown group called Black Hand, which the caller said was responsible for both explosions. The caller did not have a Lebanese accent, the radio said.

''No compelling governmental purpose justifies a prosecutor's use of peremptory challenges solely on the basis of race.'' - Judge Eugene H. Nickerson of Federal District Court in Brooklyn. (A1:3.)

George A. Sawyer, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Shipbuilding and Logistics, said today that while he was in the Government he had removed himself from all contract decisions affecting his former employer, John J. McMullen Associates. Mr. Sawyer said in an interview that he had gone out of his way to avoid the perception of a conflict of interests by telling his deputy to handle matters ''where I had knowledge that McMullen Associates was directly involved or they would be directly affected.'' Mr. Sawyer said that he did not know whether his instructions to his deputy were in writing or given orally but that he also told Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. that he would disqualify himself. The usual practice in the Government is for officials to delegate responsibility to their deputies on matters on which they wish to disqualify themselves. Often, this action is in writing and is widely circulated.

The Chase Manhattan Corporation said yesterday that it had agreed to purchase Lincoln First Banks Inc., a large Rochester-based bank holding company, for $308 million. The deal would represent the biggest acquisition in the history of Chase, the nation's third-largest bank holding company, with assets of $80 billion. It would also give Chase the biggest branch network in the state, edging out Citibank. The 135 branches of Lincoln First, which has total assets of $4 billion, would increase Chase's total to 328, compared with Citibank's 315.

The Starrett Housing Corporation announced yesterday that it had won the first expropriation case against Iran to be settled by an international claims tribunal in The Hague. Starrett said the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal ruled that the Government of Iran had deprived Starrett of its property and contractual rights by expropriating a high-rise complex that the company was constructing in Teheran at the time of the overthrow of the Shah. Still to be decided is the amount that will be awarded to Starrett, which filed a $112.5 million claim in November 1981. The company last month revised its claim to $136 million, including interest. The tribunal has appointed an assessor to determine the value of the expropriation.

The Rockefeller family today turned over 743 acres of its woodland estate for use as a New York State park. A thousand more acres of the 3,500-acre property - maintained by the Rockefellers for six generations - will be added to the park in future years. In addition, the Rockefeller mansion, Kykuit, and ancillary buildings, including an orangery, coach barn and greenhouses, were turned over as part of an 86-acre gift to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, also for later use by the public. Orin Lehman, the State Parks Commissioner, indicated that the new park would probably be called Rockefeller State Park. It contains meadows, woodlands, streams and a lake and is expected to be used for hiking, jogging, picnicking, nature study and cross- country skiing. Preparation for the public should take about a year.

Because of a production error, the TV Sports column on Tuesday omitted the last two sentences of a remark by Jim McKenna, vice president and general manager of CBS Sports, concerning Tom Brookshier's derogatory reference to the University of Louisville basketball team. The omission gave an unintended meaning to the paragraph that followed. Mr. McKenna, saying that the network had properly apologized to the university, added: ''CBS's purpose in Raleigh is to cover a basketball game. That's the business we're in.''

International Two bomb blasts in Beirut killed at least 19 people, including a French soldier, and wounded more then 40 people. A pickup truck packed with explosives blew up outside a French military command post in East Beirut five minutes after a bomb exploded in a crowded hotel bar in West Beirut. (Page A1, Column 6.) A report disputed key explanations offered by Gen. Paul X. Kelley, the Marine Corps commandant, in Congressional testimony last month on the Oct. 23 bombing of the Marine compound in Beirut. The House subcommittee that investigated the truck bombing, which killed 241 American servicemen, issued the full text of its 78-page report. (A1:5.)

A higher-than-expected swell of Christmas buying across the country is expected to present the nation's retailers with their own holiday gift - their best profits in recent years. The sales surge means that retailers' pretax earnings in December and the fourth quarter should be the highest since 1978. The season is expected to produce between 50 and 65 percent of the year's profits, instead of the normal 40 to 50 percent. Stronger sales alone do not necessarily produce such healthy profits. But combined with inventory controls that are apparently tighter than usual this season, and operating expenses that do not increase through the holidays, the result is stronger-than-expected earnings, according to industry analysts and store executives.

The Government reported today that the economy's lively growth seemed to have moderated in the last three months of the year to a pace that the Reagan Administration said could be sustained through 1984 and beyond. The Administration seized the opportunity to call on the Federal Reserve Board to relax the tight interest rate policy that it has been following since summer, now that the economy has reached a comfortable cruising speed. In today's report, the Commerce Department said that its ''flash'' estimate showed the gross national product, the broadest measure of the economy, growing at a 4.5 percent annual rate in the final quarter of 1983. Strong increases in consumer spending and in long-depressed business investment in equipment to speed production offset a sharp decline in American exports, largely the consequence of the strong dollar.