What was going on when I was born?

The New York City Transit Authority said yesterday that its new Japanese subway cars had failed their first two performance tests because of minor problems with brakes and door switches. The authority had hoped to have 325 of the cars running on the IRT Lexington Avenue line by the spring of 1985, but transit officials said they now considered this ''extremely optimistic.'' ''A four-to-six-month delay wouldn't surprise me in the least,'' the authority's senior vice president for operations, David F. Feeley, said. To Continue Using Old Cars The delay will mean the authority will continue using its present IRT cars, some of which were built in the late 40's.

State governments have reacted quite differently to the threat of the pesticide EDB in food, confusing consumers and causing health officials to look for a way to standardize their testing and enforcement programs. Some states are rigorously testing products and enforcing the guidelines the Environmental Protection Agency set this month for safe levels of EDB, or ethylene dibromide. Other states have set standards stricter than the Federal ones. Still others have taken little or no action. In some states, contaminated products that had been ordered removed from grocery stores were allowed back on the shelves after the Federal standards were issued.

Governor Cuomo has blocked state funds for the publication of the official papers of his predecessor, Hugh L. Carey, saying printing the papers costs too much and should be discontinued. The move would end a tradition going back to the 1870's. The decision prompted complaints from historians and an outcry from the Legislature, which had frequently been at odds with Mr. Carey. A $700,060 contract between the state and the City University of New York to print seven volumes of Mr. Carey's papers had been pending in the Governor's office for several weeks.

Officials said today that Israel was planning for a long-term occupation of a zone in southern Lebanon, in view of the Lebanese Government's decision to cancel a security accord with Israel. Final decisions on the zone's boundaries have not been made. But officials said the army would pull back from its positions at the Awali River to a line closer to the Israeli-Lebanese border and would move out of such major population centers as the coastal city of Sidon. The move would decrease the number of Lebanese civilians under Israeli control to about half of the current 500,000 to 600,000.

The Cuomo administration said yesterday that the arrest of a parolee on charges of killing a police officer had ''reinforced and accelerated'' its efforts to replace the head of the State Parole Board. The Governor's counselor, Timothy J. Russert, said the administration hoped to be able to name a replacement next week for the board's chairman, Edward R. Hammock. The Governor's criminal justice coordinator, Lawrence T. Kurlander, said the Parole Board had been notified on two occasions last year that George Acosta, now being held for the murder of a New York City police officer, had been arrested when he was out on parole. But on neither occasion did the board begin proceedings to revoke Mr. Acosta's parole and return him to prison.

President Reagan sent legislation to Congress today calling for a fourfold increase in military aid for El Salvador this year. Under the proposal, the aid would not be conditional on ''demonstrated progress'' by El Salvador in ending human rights abuses. Mr. Reagan's special commission on Central America had recommended that the aid be tied to progress in human rights. That had been required under Congressional legislation vetoed last fall by Mr. Reagan.

Lebanese opposition leaders today rejected an eight-point reconciliation proposal put forward by President Amin Gemayel. Syria also denounced the plan, with the official press agency describing it as a ''trick that has been unmasked.'' (Page 5.) Tonight, heavy fighting broke out in the capital and to the east between anti- Gemayel militias and units of the Lebanese Army still loyal to the President.

Inside the Fortress of Good Success, an aging concrete structure on the banks of the Tagus River here where the guns have not sounded in years, the walls are decorated with posters from the Portuguese revolution of almost a decade ago. The posters capture the explosion of joy when army officers took over the streets of Lisbon with red carnations in their gun barrels. They depict soldiers and farmers, marching arm in arm toward a glorious future. They extol the Armed Forces Movement, the group of junior officers who overturned 47 years of dictatorship, as ''the sentinel of the people.'' The fortress is not a museum. It is the headquarters of a new organization in the Portuguese Army called the Association of the 25th of April, founded as a ''cultural association'' to ''consecrate and spread the spirit of the liberating movement'' that began with the coup on April 25, 1974, which ushered in democracy.

A detailed picture of the $38 million gold robbery near Heathrow Airport in November emerged today in testimony involving a security guard. The guard, Anthony John Black, 31 years old, pleaded guilty to complicity in the crime and was sentenced to six years in prison. Mr. Black began cooperating with the police soon after his arrest, a week after the robbery at a warehouse near the airport. His confession led to the arrests of three other men who have not been tried: John McAvoy, 32, a builder; Anthony White, 40, unemployed, and Brian Robinson, 40, an auto salesman.

The wife of a leading Soviet human rights activist said today that the authorities had indicated that her husband was en route to Siberia to serve the second part of his 12-year sentence, a 5-year term of ''internal exile.'' A Western diplomat, quoting dissident sources here, reported Thursday that the activist, Yuri F. Orlov, had left a labor camp in the Urals after 7 years and was headed for internal exile, but it was not known where he was being sent.

Prime Minister Mohammed Karim Lamrani will visit Washington for two days starting Feb. 27 for talks with Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Secretary of Agriculture John R. Block, diplomatic sources said today.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl has decided to press President Reagan and the new Soviet leader, Konstantin U. Chernenko, to hold a summit meeting that he hopes would lead to a resumption of talks on limiting nuclear arms, a high aide to the West German leader says. According to one of the Chancellor's closest advisers, who accompanied him to Moscow for the funeral of Yuri V. Andropov, Mr. Kohl urged the new Soviet party chief to meet soon with the American President but received no response. On a visit to Washington early next month, Mr. Kohl will make a similar appeal to Mr. Reagan, the aide said. The adviser reported that the Russian leader, in his meeting with Mr. Kohl, said ''all Soviet offers are still on the table'' regarding nuclear arms reduction but did not indicate whether Moscow expected the Geneva negotiations on medium-range and strategic arms to resume soon.