What was going on when I was born?

The Justice Department reached agreement with two major steel companies today on ways to make their proposed merger meet antitrust objections, according to an Administration source familiar with the negotiations. The source, who asked not to be identified, said the department is expected to make the announcement Wednesday. Virtually all issues holding up the merger of the LTV Corporation and the Republic Steel Corporation have been resolved, he added, and any remaining issues are to be settled at Wednesday's session. The Justice Department declined to comment after a day of what appeared to be seesaw negotiations.

Picture captions in some editions of Business Day yesterday, with an article in the Business People column about the General Electric Credit Corporation, were reversed. Gary C. Wendt appeared at the left and Robert C. Wright at the right.

A special grand jury in Queens reported yesterday that it had uncovered ''shocking procedural abuses'' in the way a Forest Hills hospital kept secret its withholding of emergency resuscitation from terminally ill patients whose hearts or breathing failed. The grand jury said the hospital, identified by state prosecutors as La Guardia Hospital, had tried to escape legal consequences of withholding the emergency measures by making sure there would be no record of ''do not resuscitate'' orders. The grand jury said such orders were signified by a purple decal attached to a patient's nursing record and discarded along with the nursing record when a patient died. Charles G. Moerdler, a lawyer for La Guardia Hospital, called the charges in the report ''the height of irresponsibility'' and denied that the hospital had any ''do not resuscitate'' policies. ''There were no purple dots, either,'' he said.

After two and a half years of studying a question that has weighed on the minds of American Jews for four decades, a group of prominent American Jews has concluded that the country's major Jewish organizations did not do all that they could have to save victims of the Holocaust. ''As much as it hurts me to have to say it, we didn't do enough,'' the group's chairman, former Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg, said in an interview. ''Nobody did enough.'' Much of the final report of the American Jewish Commission on the Holocaust, an unofficial group of 34 Jewish Americans, is given over to reasons why Jewish leaders did not act more effectively, although they knew by the fall of 1942 that the Nazis were bent on a policy of mass extermination. Last year, 15 months after it was created, the commission broke up temporarily in a clash over the harsh assessment of former Jewish leaders in a preliminary report. The dispute is sure to continue with the publication of the final report, which is to be released early next month.

The Lebanese national unity talks ended in failure today after the country's eight main factional leaders were unable to agree on more than postponing a discussion of their differences into the indefinite future. The talks failed for many reasons, delegates said, but the two they most often cited were the inability of Lebanon's factional leaders to consider serious changes to modernize the political system and the refusal of the Christian leaders to give Lebanon's Moslem majority more political power. ''The failure is perfectly clear,'' a senior Shiite Moslem delegate said. ''You can't get these old feudal lords to absorb new ideas, because they are afraid of change. I think this was their last hurrah. We have an unworkable system, leadership and mentality, but ultimately change will come whether they like it or not.''

An article on the New York Philharmonic in some editions yesterday misidentified the violinist Kyung- Wha Chung. She is the sister of the conductor Myung-Whun Chung.

President Reagan has decided to withdraw the offer to sell advanced antiaircraft missiles to Jordan and Saudi Arabia because of overwhelming Congressional opposition, Congressional sources said tonight. They said the decision to cancel the proposed sale of Stinger shoulder-held antiaircraft missiles was made after an Administration effort to obtain a trade-off was rejected by the leading pro-Israeli group. The Administration was hoping that in return for canceling the Stinger sale, Israel's supporters in Congress would agree to kill a pending bill that would require moving the United States Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Change in Embassy Bill The offer to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee was turned down, a Congressional source said. But it is understood that the Jerusalem bill may be modified to make it nonbinding on the Administration.

Walter F. Mondale defeated Gary Hart in the Democratic Presidential primary in Illinois tonight, achieving a hard-fought victory he needed to put new life into his candidacy. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was running a strong third in a contest that marked the start of the nomination battle in the big industrial states. Mr. Jackson, the only black candidate in the contest, was riding a wave of minority support. Although Mr. Jackson pulled black votes that probably would have gone to Mr. Mondale, the former Vice President made up for that by running much more strongly than Mr. Hart among white voters in Chicago and by getting up to 40 percent of the vote in Hart strongholds in the rural and suburban areas. Hart Acknowledges Defeat Acknowledging his defeat in Washington, Mr. Hart stressed Mr. Mondale's advantage in union support and more numerous campaign appearances in Illinois.

The Supreme Court, rejecting the Administration's invitation to relax the prohibition against vertical price-fixing, today upheld a $10.5 million antitrust judgment against the Monsanto Company for conspiring with some of its distributors to fix resale prices. The vote was 8 to 0. The Court's refusal, expressed in a footnote, to use the case as a vehicle for a major change in antitrust law turned a potential landmark into a fairly routine antitrust decision. The Justice Department had recommended that the Court use the case, Monsanto v. Spray-Rite, No. 82- 914, to hold that resale price maintenance was not always a violation of the Sherman Act's prohibition of price-fixing.

There is something odd about the Pub, a popular meeting place on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. No drinks are served. It is open day and night, but is usually so crowded that no one can get in. You cannot reach it by taxi, on the subway or on foot. The Pub does not exist in three-dimensional space. It is part of bulletin board and message center in a computer belonging to Billy Arnell, a freelance record producer whose hobby is computers.

The nation's economy, in a surprisingly strong performance, is growing at a rate of 7.2 percent a year, the Commerce Department said today. The department issued this estimate of the gross national product in its initial, or ''flash,'' report for the January-March quarter. The 7.2 percent figure was substantially higher than the estimate for the final three months of 1983, which was revised upward today to 5 percent. Inflation was reported to be running at a rate of 5.1 percent a year, up from 4.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 1983.

NOT long ago I was invited to dine in one of Manhattan's fancier restaurants. Four of us were at the table; our host was a well-off man about town, which proved a good thing: When the bill arrived, it was about $300 before tips. That tab, of course, could have been equaled or exceeded in a score of similarly luxurious dining spots in this city. The meal, it must be said, was excellent. I had sauteed foie gras as an appetizer, roast pheasant with figs for a main course, a selection of sherbets for dessert and coffee. We had a round of drinks and consumed two bottles of wine, a M^acon-Lugny (one of the best and least expensive white wines from France) priced at $20 and a California cabernet sauvignon at $30. Later that afternoon, back at my home on Eastern Long Island with my host, I was looking through the bookshelves in my reference room and my eye fell on a 1934 restaurant guide titled ''Dining in New York'' by Rian James. I handed my friend the volume, observing that fewer than half a dozen of the 300 restaurants listed are still in existence.