What was going on when I was born?

-century Dutch paintings that have just reached the Metropolitan Museum of Art have been touring the United States and Canada since the spring of 1982. The original purpose of their visit was to celebrate 200 years of friendly relations between the United States and the Netherlands. Comforting as that is, it doesn't rate more than a few moments' attention when compared with the other ''alliances'' implied by the paintings themselves.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey yesterday approved a $1.4 billion budget for 1984 that provides for the largest staff expansion in 15 years and a new fund to finance road, sewer and water-treatment projects. The budget, adopted unanimously, includes an operating portion that went above $1 billion for the first time and a capital portion of $340 million. ''The themes this year are service on the operating side and capital investment,'' Peter C. Goldmark Jr., the authority's executive director, told the agency's 12 commissioners at a meeting in the authority's teak-paneled board room at the World Trade Center. Adding 259 Positions Mr. Goldmark said the authority would expand its staff by 259 positions, to 8,003. The agency plans to add 45 police officers, as well as maintenance workers, toll collectors and tow truck operators.

The staff of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is recommending that the agency sharply restrict the federally backed insurance available on deposits placed by money brokers, a spokesman for the agency said yesterday. Money brokers, who are not regulated, collect deposits and break them into $100,000 packages, in order to qualify for maximum insurance on each. For example, a broker will take $1 million and place 10 separate $100,000 certificates of deposits with one bank.

Friday KING JOHN' ON BOWERY Combat vignettes range from the 13th century to the Vietnam War in a production of Shakespeare's rarely staged ''King John,'' which opens tonight at 8 at the Cocteau Repertory, 330 Bowery. The idea is to show the futility of war. While this theme was not exactly spelled out by Shakespeare, this history play is open to such an interpretation, according to Eve Adamson, the company's artistic director, who is staging it. The ''perplexing'' title character, she says, is neither a hero like Henry V nor a charming villain like Richard III. The play follows John's desperate attempts to keep his throne from its rightful heir. Tickets: $8.50. Reservations: 677-0060. ART AT THE CLOCKTOWER Every year, some 25 artists from around the country and 15 from abroad are awarded low-cost studio space at the Clocktower in Lower Manhattan and at P.S. 1 in Long Island City, Queens, under a program of the Institute for Art and Urban Resources. Now they are showing what they have been up to. An exhibition of paintings and sculpture, as well as performance and sound art, is on at the Clocktower, 108 Leonard Street, through Feb. 12. It's free. Information: 784-2084. ARCHITECTS' TREASURES

More military aid for El Salvador will be sought by the Reagan Administration, according to a White House official. He said officials were preparing to ask Congress for $250 million more in military aid in the present fiscal year, nearly four times the current level. He also said the Administration planned to seek about $350 million in military aid for El Salvador in the next fiscal year. (Page A1, Col. 6.) A report on Central America issued Wednesday by a Presidential advisory commission was challenged by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The New York Senator said he found no evidence in the report to support the panel's position that a Soviet- Cuban challenge in the region represented a serious threat to United States security. (A8:5-6.)

Regulatory problems have blocked the Goldome Bank for Savings from acquiring a commercial bank in Albany from the Bankers Trust Company of New York. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has insisted that Goldome raise about $475 million in new capital through a stock offering, while the Federal Home Loan Bank Board has delayed approving Goldome's prospectus in a dispute over accounting practices. By some accounts, Goldome's capital stands at only $75 million, or less than three-quarters of 1 percent of its assets of more than $11 billion. Only a little more than two years ago, its assets amounted to only $3 billion.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that he was prepared to discuss all the issues between the United States and the Soviet Union ''in a constructive spirit'' when he meets with Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko next week in Stockholm. But when asked if he thought the chill in Soviet-American relations would end, he said, ''It takes two to thaw.'' Mr. Shultz had two separate news conferences today, one this morning by satellite with correspondents in several European capitals and the other this afternoon at the State Department. In effect, he opened the Administration's latest effort to persuade American and European public opinion that it is sincere, despite the strains in Soviet-American relations, in its desire to reach accords with the Soviet Union.

The Silicon Valley of California has been portrayed as a vision of the American post-industrial future, the epitome of free enterprise, a place where anybody with brains, a good idea and the courage to exploit it can make an overnight fortune in electronics. But therapists and law-enforcement officials here say there are growing signs that this high-pressure competitive environment is taking a large human toll in divorce, child abuse, alcoholism and drug use. ''This is the modern gold rush,'' said Dr. Regina T. Kriss, a family therapist in Palo Alto, Calif. ''There is a strike-it- rich phenomenon, a feeling that 'I can do it as well as anybody else,' that 'somebody else is really making it big and I've got to scramble.' You are terribly afraid to stop working because somebody will get ahead of you.''

''I'm not saying there is no evidence. But if you go to all this effort, facts please.''

A Company News report in Business Day on Wednesday misstated the amount of a debt repayment for which a subsidiary of Alhambra Mines Inc. received a notice of default. The amount is $97,580.65.

The Government said today that a United States Army helicopter pilot killed Wednesday near the Nicaragua-Honduras border had come under fire from Nicaraguan troops after his forced landing in Honduras. The White House called the killing ''reckless and unprovoked.'' The White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, said the United States expected both an explanation of the death of the helicopter pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Jeffrey C. Schwab of Joliet, Ill., and an assurance that there would be no similiar incident in the future. Under Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger summoned the Nicaraguan Ambassador, Jose Antonio Toledo, Wednesday evening and lodged a strong protest, Mr. Speakes said. Tonight, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, coordinator of the Nicaraguan junta, denied that Sandinista troops had fired at the pilot after he landed on a road on the Honduran side of the border, The Associated Press reported. ''We cannot accept the version that the pilot was fired at on land,'' he said, repeating that Sandinista troops fired at the helicopter only when it was in Nicaraguan airspace. In a statement issued Wednesday night, the Nicaraguan Defense Ministry said its military units along the border had fired on an unidentified military helicopter over Nicaraguan territory that was later forced to land 200 yards inside Honduras. It said it ''deplores the incident,'' which it blamed on the United States military presence in Central America, and expressed condolences to the pilot's family. Secretary of State George P. Shultz said the United States had no plan or ''instinct'' to undertake a retaliatory military action, and there was no evidence that any such action was being considered.

President Reagan and his advisers, unable to agree on drastic remedies to reduce the Federal deficit, were reported today to be leaning toward recommending the creation of a bipartisan Presidential commission to come up with new budget solutions. Administration officials said that it remained undecided what the composition and timing of the commission would be. But they said that it would likely include representatives from the Democratic leadership in Congress and would report on a series of deficit-closing proposals after the election in November.