What was going on when I was born?

Robert C. Stempel, general manager of the Chevrolet division, and Lloyd E. Reuss, general manager of the Buick division, seem likely to head two new groups that would result from a proposed reorganization of the General Motors Corporation, according to people in the auto industry. The G.M. board of directors is expected to approve the plan, which would consolidate the company's automotive manufacturing and marketing operations, at a meeting in New York on Monday. A company spokesman, Donald Postma, declined late last week to confirm that the matter would be on the board's agenda, but sources in the industry predict approval of the change. General Motors, these sources say, plans to realign its five automobile divisions - Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac - and its Fisher body and assembly divisions into two groups, with one concentrating on large cars and the other on smaller cars. The auto divisions will continue to exist, the sources add, but will become primarily sales and marketing organizations, with designing, engineering and manufacturing concentrated in the two consolidated groups.

A report Dec. 22 in the Briefing column of the Washington Talk page, about President Reagan's exercises, misidentified a professional wrestler. He is Andre the Giant.

A Presidential commission on Central America will recommend continued American aid to insurgents seeking the overthrow of the Nicaraguan Government, three commission members reported today. But they said the report will assert that such aid will become less necessary as the Nicaraguan Government halts its assistance to leftist guerrillas in El Salvador and makes progress toward internal democracy. The three members said the report treats aid to Nicaraguan rebels as an important way to promote negotiations for a regional settlement in Central America and not as a way of trying to overthrow the Government in Managua. More Aid Called Necessary The report, still private and not scheduled for delivery to President Reagan until Wednesday, also asserts that El Salvador needs six times as much military aid for 1984 and 1985 as Congress has appropriated.

''September was as if someone had turned on a spigot. Business poured in.''

An attack on United States marines in Beirut killed one of them. At least a dozen marines were fired on by unidentified assailants as they were leaving a helicopter. Two Lebanese Army soldiers were wounded when they joined the marines in returning the fire. The dead marine was identified as Cpl. Edward J. Gargano, of Quincy, Mass. (Page A1, Column 1.) Israel denied published reports that it was willing to withdraw its troops from Lebanon without a reciprocal pullout by Syria. An emphatic denial came from Dan Meridor, the Cabinet Secretary. The Israeli press published reports last week that were then circulated by United States officials in Washington that Israel had revised its policy and was willing to consider a pullout despite the presence of Syrian troops in eastern and northern Lebanon. (A1:2.)

Inspired by the opportunity to reach the Super Bowl for the second time in four years, humbled by two regular-season losses to the Seattle Seahawks, and aroused by what they perceived as a lack of respect, the Los Angeles Raiders controlled the American Conference championship game this afternoon. The Raiders stifled the Seattle running game, avoided damaging mistakes and beat the Seahawks, 30-14, at the Los Angeles Coliseum. They will meet the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XVIII in Tampa, the fourth appearance in the history of the Raider franchise, and more significantly to the crowd of 88,734, their first since moving here from Oakland last season. Forced into passing situations by the ineffectiveness of its rushing game, Seattle quarterbacks Dave Krieg and Jim Zorn were intercepted five times. Curt Warner, the rookie running back who had averaged 106 yards in each of Seattle's two playoff victories, was held to 26 yards in 11 carries. His longest run was 7 yards.

On a wooded plot of land behind an elaborate wrought-iron gate at 66th Street and York Avenue, some of the world's most brilliant scientists are trying to solve such puzzles as: How does a canary learn to sing? How does a person get cancer? How does a person get fat? How do we see? What do animals think? How was life on earth created? The place, the Rockefeller University, is hushed, churchlike, serene. There is barely a whisper of sirens and traffic on the 15-acre campus of London plane trees, with shrubs and flowers and stretching green lawns. The university is an experiment itself - an experiment in the life style of science. Conditions are kept optimal for scientific discovery. The basic unit is the laboratory - there are no departments and hardly any classes. Everyone, from the top scientists to the graduate students (there are no undergraduates) works on a laboratory project.

Last summer, soon after he was sworn in as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rudolph W. Giuliani made four unpublicized visits to the Lower East Side. His purpose, he said, was to get a first-hand look at the drug trafficking that has been openly conducted on the streets there for years. Those visits, Mr. Giuliani said, led to a new strategy of encouraging Federal agents to arrest low-level drug dealers and prosecuting the dealers in the Federal courts. Previously, Federal authorities concentrated on middle- and high-level traffickers and left the smaller dealers to the city's Police Department and state criminal courts. Any sale of narcotics is both a Federal and a state violation.

An agreement between 150 Western banks stretching out repayment of $130 million in medium-term debt owed them by Cuba has collapsed because of opposition by the American Express Company, according to banking sources. It is believed to be the first time since the international debt crisis began 18 months ago that a private debt rescheduling agreement between banks and an indebted third- world borrower has broken down because one creditor refused to accept terms approved by all the other creditors. American Express effectively scuttled the rescheduling agreement just before Christmas, the banking sources said, by telling other banks that the Swiss-based Trade Development Bank, which American Express now controls, is subject to a United States ban on loans to Cuba.

''There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.'' ''Man and Superman'' - George Bernard Shaw. CHICAGO IN his native France, Yannick Simon Camille Noah is known as The Black Panther, The Indomitable Lion and The Decathlete of Tennis. Those hard-edged names, however, do not fit the man whose face is an instant barometer of pleasure and pain, whose voice trembles with emotion when he speaks and whose hands flutter helplessly when he searches for a perfectly expressive phrase.

A Washington dispatch Dec. 28 on state laws regarding tape-recorded telephone conversations incorrectly stated the law of Georgia. The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that the law does not prohibit one party to a conversation from secretly recording or transmitting it without the consent of the other.

It is a more sober and wiser home computer industry that greets a visitor to this winter's consumer electronics show. Gone are the emphasis on cut-rate prices and the flurry of dazzling product introductions. Instead, at least the manufacturers hope, there will be profits. Bloodied by price wars and heavy losses last year, the industry is now waiting for the next phase of competition, over higher-priced machines.