What was going on when I was born?

Kyung-Sung Choi thinks that a 24- hour delicatessen selling some fruits, vegetables and other foods is just what Park Avenue needs. He has not been in this country long. As remodeling progressed in recent days at his store on the northeast corner of Park Avenue and 75th Street, stop-work orders were issued by the City Buildings Department and the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The local Community Board has filed a complaint against him with the city. Inspectors, police officers and irate neighbors have visited.

An article by The Associated Press in Business Day on Friday, about Imperial Chemical Industries, misstated the company's revenue figures. Revenues rose 12 percent in 1983, to $12 billion, from $10.7 billion in 1982.

A Federal appeals court today struck down the death sentence of an Alabama convict,saying the law under which he was sentenced, and under which his accomplice had already been executed, was unconstitutional. The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ordered a new sentencing hearing for the convict, Wayne Eugene Ritter, before a Mobile jury. Under the law that was struck down , a murder conviction by a jury carried a mandatory sentence of death. The law was changed in 1980, and the Mobile jury could choose to sentence Mr. Ritter to death or to life in prison under the new law.

A late rally, spearheaded by heavy institutional buying, sent stock prices up sharply yesterday for the second consecutive session. The biggest gainers were announced or rumored merger candidates. The Dow Jones industrial average, which soared more than 30 points on Friday, climbed 14.86 points more yesterday, to 1,179.96. At 3 P.M., the average was up less than 5 points.

The Atlantic Richfield Company is preparing a takeover bid for the Gulf Oil Corporation, banking officials disclosed yesterday. Gulf rejected an informal offer of $11.6 billion from Arco a few weeks ago. Now there are indications that Arco's formal offer may involve as much as $13 billion. Arco's bid, which Gulf heatedly rebuffed then, is expected to be warmly received now, and it could possibly be the first of at least two competing offers to be made for Gulf.

''Do the residents of Park Avenue want to look out the window at vegetables? They most certainly do not.'' - Shirley Bernstein of Park Avenue. (A1:5.)

David G. Taylor, vice chairman and chief financial officer of the Continental Illinois Corporation, today was named chairman and chief executive of the troubled bank holding company, succeeding Roger E. Anderson, 62, who retired under pressure from a group of independent directors. Analysts said the move represented an attempt to end nearly two years of turbulence that began at Continental following the bank's tremendous losses from its association with the defunct Penn Square Bank in Oklahoma City. Continental has been suffering from anemic profits and low morale. It has been losing market share to its rivals, and management attention has been diverted by brush fire after corporate brush fire.

DOCTORS in the United States and abroad are increasingly concerned about the incidence of a disorder in premature newborns that often leads to blindness. The number of infants involved is not great compared with many other afflictions, but the tragedy is real and growing. From relatively few cases a decade ago, the estimated number of infants legally blinded by the disorder, called RLF, for retrolental fibroplasia, has risen to more than 500 a year in this country. An additional 1,500 children each year lose part of their eyesight to RLF. And the numbers may be higher, because doctors are not required to report the disorder to any data- gathering body.

Reagan Administration officials said today that the United States was no longer actively involved in trying to produce a formula for a political settlement in Lebanon. They said the Administration was more than willing to leave it to the Lebanese and other Arabs to try to work out a solution on their own. Donald Rumsfeld, President Reagan's special Middle East envoy, has decided not to return to Lebanon for further mediation efforts at this time, the officials added. Gemayel Would Cancel Pact This decision was reached in part because President Amin Gemayel of Lebanon has indicated that because of pressure from the Syrians and from Lebanese Moslem and Druse factions, any political solution would have to include cancellation of the May 17, 1983, agreement between Israel and Lebanon on withdrawal of Israeli forces, a State Department official said. ''We have no desire to broker an agreement that will only cater to Syrian interests,'' he asserted.

THE General Accounting Office is expected to rule next month on an effort by the Bank Street College of Education to overturn the awarding to Harvard University of a $7.6 million Federal contract for a new center for the study of educational technology. Bank Street, whose unsuccessful bid was less costly than Harvard's and had the support of a technical advisory panel, has accused the National Institute of Education of violating Federal procurement rules by ''arbitrarily'' selecting Harvard. ''They overruled the advisory panel without providing good reasons, and they put us at a big disadvantage by giving cost information to Harvard but not to us,'' said Robert C. Granger, vice president and dean of Bank Street. Manuel J. Justiz, director of the National Institute of Education, the research arm of the Department of Education, made the decision. He defended it on the ground that Harvard's proposal contained a ''broader vision of what a new center in this area should be.'' The dispute has aroused considerable attention in educational research circles, in part because it comes as the Department of Education's procedures for awarding contracts to the 17 Federal educational research centers around the country are being scrutinized by Congress and the Reagan Administration.

The Supreme Court refused today to hear New York City's challenge to a Federal regulation that would require the city to open its highways to trucks carrying nuclear waste. New York, which has banned the transportation of nuclear waste on its major roadways since 1976, had argued that the Federal Government had not adequately assessed the environmental risk of carrying nuclear waste through a crowded urban area. The United States Department of Transportation adopted the regulation in 1981 without preparing the formal ''environmental impact statement'' required by law for all Federal projects having a ''significant'' impact on the environment. City Won in Lower Court New York City sued to block the regulation as soon as it was issued and won the first round in Federal District Court in Manhattan. But last August the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned the lower court's ruling and held that the department's environmental appraisal had been adequate.

When Brooklyn's Woodhull Hospital opened its doors 15 months ago, after 6 years of delays and huge budget overruns, it seemed that the worst of its troubles might be over. But running Woodhull has been nearly as complicated as building it. In its first year of operation it failed two state medical inspections and suffered a string of technical problems and unforeseen structural renovations that have cost an extra $15 million to set right. Patients have had to be transferred because too few beds are available, and it has been difficult to attract new people to the staff, according to senior doctors at the hospital. Hospital officials say that the worst problems are over and that the city's newest public hospital has begun to offer the quality medical services to the impoverished neighborhoods of north Brooklyn that it was originally built to provide.