What was going on when I was born?

The Reagan Administration has decided to seek a $200 million increase in the Justice Department's budget for next year, according to department officials. Congressional approval of the expected request for the fiscal year 1985, which starts Oct. 1, would bring the Justice Department's budget to approximately $3.57 billion, nearly 6 percent more than this year. Most of that money, officials said, would go toward criminal justice, including the hiring of new agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration, an expansion of Federal prosecutors' offices around the country and the building of new prison space. Since President Reagan took office in 1981, the department has gained a 43 percent budget increase, excluding the new request.

The New York Times today publishes an interview with Senator Gary Hart, another in a series of interviews with candidates for the Presidency. In the interview Senator Hart made these major points: Economy - He called for Government policies to lead basic industries to modernize and to train workers, and a jobs program.

Leftist guerrillas destroyed El Salvador's largest bridge today after routing several hundred Government troops assigned to guard it. ''The loss of this bridge was a serious setback for the economic activities of this country,'' the Defense Ministry said, adding that motorists could still cross the river using a nearby dam. The quarter-mile long Cuscatlan bridge was the last suspension bridge open to motorists traveling between the eastern and western parts of the country. Army Base Is Overrun Its destruction was the second major defeat for Government troops in less than 72 hours. Two days ago guerrilla forces overran the country's fourth largest army base, occupying it for 12 hours before withdrawing.

A Nigerian Army general announced today that he had assumed authority in the aftermath of the military overthrow of the country's civilian Government on Saturday. Speaking on a Nigerian radio broadcast monitored here, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Buhari said the new ''federal military Government'' had taken over ''to save this nation from imminent collapse.'' He said that Nigerians had been living under ''difficult and degrading conditions.'' The general, who served as Oil Minister in Nigeria in the 1970's and most recently commanded an armored division, said that ''after due consultation among the services of the armed forces,'' he had been ''formally invested with authority as the head of the federal military Government and the Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.''

The Reagan Administration is applying heavy economic and diplomatic pressure to persuade Japan to end commercial whaling. The amount of fish Japanese ships are allowed to catch in United States waters has been sharply reduced because the Japanese did not agree to observe an international moratorium on whale killing, scheduled to begin in 1985. And, when President Reagan visited Japan recently, Secretary of State George P. Shultz pressed the matter in a meeting with the Foreign Minister. Conservationists in the United States say the Administration's actions are forcing a consensus in Japan to accept the moratorium, though Japanese officials disagree.

An advisory panel has recommended that Governor Cuomo adopt an ambitious plan to use the Urban Development Corporation to help spur growth in high-technology industries in New York State. The recommendations of the panel, which was created by the chairman of the U.D.C., William J. Stern, included these initiatives: - Creation of a state institute to conduct advanced research into computer programming. - Establishment of a state computer network that would allow residents using computer terminals - which the panel recommended be placed in public libraries - to file income tax data, register motor vehicles or ask an agency for assistance. - Development by the U.D.C. of low- cost commercial space for information-processing divisions of major companies and for new entrepreneurs.

Maj. Gen. Mohammed Buhari, who announced today that he had assumed power in the aftermath of Saturday's military coup in Nigeria, is described by diplomats as an ardent nationalist who is tough, self-assured and somewhat austere. ''If anyone was going to take things over, it would have been him,'' said an American diplomat who knows him. ''He has a lot of drive and a lot of interest in doing something for his country.'' The general, 41 years old, is described by diplomats in Washington as moderate to slightly conservative politically. He is the seventh leader of Africa's most populous country since its independence from Britain in 1960.

Governor Cuomo has signed a bill strengthening New York City's regulatory power over more than 35,000 nonmedallion cabs. He also signed a bill making it easier to restrict the development of privately held land. Both measures were signed Saturday, and the signings were announced yesterday. Jack Lusk, Mayor Koch's special transportation adviser, said the cab law, which will take effect in 90 days, gives the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission the power to hear cases involving violations of its regulations by nonmedallion, or gypsy cab, drivers or owners.

The first 16 American-made cruise missiles based in Europe became operational today, four years after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization pledged to deploy them to counter growing numbers of Soviet SS-20 missiles. British Defense Ministry officials said the first battery of the low-flying nuclear missiles was ready for use at the Greenham Common air base, 50 miles west of London.

A secret petroleum prospecting plan that turned into a fiasco has given France a glimpse of a scandal involving its former leaders' fascination with so-called sniffer aircraft, designed to divine oil deposits as easily as pigs detect truffles. Disclosed by the Socialist Government during the holiday season, when the country is as quiet as it is in August, the story of the pseudoscientific hunt for oil, and intimations of its cover-up during the tenure of President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, has attracted as much amusement and embarrassment as indignation. In several days of hectic accusations, the Government referred to a ''gigantic swindle'' involving more than $100 million plowed into a fruitless petroleum search by a state company from 1975 to 1979; sniffer planes supposed to detect underwater oil deposits; the disappearance of the man behind the scheme, a Belgian count with the name of Alain de Villegas de Saint Pierre Jette; an official investigation report on the matter that was ''illegally'' destroyed by a former chief judge, and copies of the report being carted off by the former President and his Prime Minister, Raymond Barre, for their personal files rather than being deposited in the state archives after their defeat in May 1981. Long accused of incompetence and amateurism, the Government, at last, was having its revenge on the political forces projecting themselves as professionals of probity.

A remote-control bomb exploded in the Hanseatic State Statistics Bureau here before dawn today, causing heavy damage but no injuries, the police said. Authorities said no one took responsibility for the bombing. Statistics officials have come under criticism recently from opponents of the national census planned this year, who contend that the census violates the privacy of West German citizens.

Newspaper and railroad offices received a half-dozen calls today claiming responsibility for the bombings Saturday night of a Marseilles station and a passenger train that killed 4 people and wounded at least 40. None of the claims was verified, and the police said they had no indication of what group might be responsible.