What was going on when I was born?

President Reagan's speech today began as what the White House described as an attempt to define a constructive bipartisan relationsip with Congress on foreign policy. But it has set off one of the sharpest confrontations between the Reagan White House and Congress. Administration officials said the wrangling may therefore make it harder than ever for Mr. Reagan and Congress to achieve cooperation in this election year on such issues as the Middle East, Central America and relations with the Soviet Union. White House aides said they had no hope or expectation of softening the criticism on foreign policy aimed at Mr. Reagan from the Democratic Presidential candidates.

The Federal Reserve Board, in its first overt move to tighten credit during the current economic recovery, today raised by half a percentage point, to 9 percent, the interest rate that it charges on loans to financial institutions. The White House said President Reagan was disappointed by the action and expressed the hope that ''this will not result in a further increase in the prime interest rate'' charged by banks. Within the White House and the Treasury Department, officials have expressed the fear that higher interest rates will choke off economic expansion and harm Mr. Reagan's chances for re- election. The Federal Reserve issued a brief statement saying it was raising its key rate, called the discount rate, simply to follow other interest rates upward. It said it was not aggressively seeking to drive up interest rates to head off a possible resurgence of inflation.

Britain told the Reagan Administration earlier this week that it disapproved of the mining of Nicaragua's harbors as interference with international shipping and asked American help in halting the mining, a British Embassy spokesman said today. ''We have made clear that we disapprove of any threat to the principle of freedom of navigation,'' said Andrew Burns, the press counselor of the British Embassy. ''What we have done is register our concern and said we don't like all this and tried to enlist American cooperation in stopping any recurrence,'' Mr. Burns added. But he said Britain had no plans to join France, which has not only voiced concern but said it might help the Nicaraguan Government remove the mines from its harbors.

President Reagan criticized Congress today for what he said was its reluctance to support the use of military force to advance foreign policy goals. In a speech here, Mr. Reagan said that Congressional second-guessing on the use of force had already undermined American diplomatic efforts in Lebanon and Congressional wavering had encouraged ''enemies of democracy'' in Central America. The President's remarks were the latest in an intensifying series of Administration complaints that Congress bears considerable responsibility for recent foreign policy problems. The criticisms, aimed at Congress in general and Congressional Democrats in particular, began after the withdrawal of the marines from Lebanon last month. Then, on Tuesday, Secretary of State George P. Shultz called for closer foreign policy collaboration between Congress and the Administration, and on Wednesday Mr. Reagan said Congress ''must take a responsibility'' for American setbacks in Lebanon.

Flooding from two days of record rainfall in the metropolitan area forced thousands of people from their homes yesterday and closed large stretches of major roadways. In Wayne, in northern New Jersey, police boats rescued people marooned in flooded homes at the confluence of the Pompton and Passaic Rivers, which were swelled by the rainfall. In Westchester County, the business district of the Village of Ardsley was closed because of standing water, and sections of major roadways were impassable. ''It's a disaster,'' said Governor Kean, who flew in a helicopter over the areas affected by the more than four inches of rain that fell Wednesday and Thursday.

Unemployment in New York State last month fell to its lowest rate in four years, the Bureau of Labor Satistics reported yesterday. Samuel M. Ehrenhalt, the bureau's regional commissioner, said the drop in unemployment was largely attributable to strength in the construction, wholesale-retail, service and financial industries. He said that an increase in New Jersey's unemployment figures by half a percentage point over February was not significant or a cause for alarm. He characterized it as well within the pattern of the last six months. Speaking at a news conference in his office here, he said the state's showing was a ''continuation of a strong situation.''

Like handymen responding to a service call, five astronauts rode off in the space shuttle Challenger today, climbing at full throttle into high orbit, with bold plans to find, pick up and then repair a disabled scientific satellite. The planned six-day mission, the first attempt to use the shuttle for servicing satellites, was launched on schedule at 8:58 A.M. After checking out the spaceship and finding that all aboard was well, the astronauts were set to handle their first task, the deployment of a 30-foot-long, 11-ton satellite carrying 57 experiments into the effects of the space environment on metals, electronics, other materials and tomato seeds. The satellite, the Long Duration Exposure Facility, is to be released into orbit Saturday morning. Then Capt. Robert L. Crippen of the Navy and Francis R. Scobee are to maneuver the Challenger higher and closer to their primary target, the Solar Max satellite that has been crippled for more than three years. They are to rendezvous with the satellite Sunday.

This is a haunted city, and the ghosts come out in force in the foggy twilight of early spring. On the curved embankment of the Moika Canal, an iron lantern briefly silhouettes Anna Karenina clutching her cloak against the bitter Baltic wind. The grand iron gates of a pale blue palace open to receive the carriages of czars and princes, while a solitary light in the Yusupov Palace catches Rasputin writhing in his poisoned agony. Bands of pale students cluster behind the crumbling plaster of dark apartment houses plotting revolution, while all around, through darkened courtyards and narrow side streets, the shadows of pathetic clerks and tubercular intellectuals scurry past - Gogol's coatless Akaky Akakiyevich, Dostoyevsky's murderous Raskolnikov, Pushkin's grief-stricken Evgeny, fleeing in mad panic from the bronze horseman, that statue of Peter the Great surveying the city he built. The ghosts and shadows flitter among the ornate cast-iron fences and past the great squares faced with European palaces and churches, across the delicate bridges suspended over endless canals from the jaws of griffins or lions, and along the vast granite- framed expanse of the Neva River, stretched out between the gilded spires of the Admiralty and the fortress of Peter and Paul.

About 2,500 young, newly married couples won new homes today in a raffle organized by the Egyptian Government. The state-built suburban homes were offered as prizes in the raffle because it was considered the fairest way to allocate scarce living space.

Artillery duels and gun battles flared across the Green Line dividing the Moslem and Christian sectors of Beirut tonight and a call for a cease-fire was ignored.

The Israeli military command announced this morning that Israeli war planes had attacked a wing of a hotel in Lebanon used by a Palestinian faction led by Naif Hawatmeh, which had taken responsibility for the terrorist attack in downtown Jerusalem last Monday. The announcement said that the Palestinians had taken over the wing of an abandoned hotel in the Lebanese town of Bhamdoun, on the Beirut-Damascus highway.

An independent study has concluded that millions of dollars in United States Government aid intended for Palestinians under Israeli occupation are being redirected by Israel away from programs that would strengthen the Arabs' economic base on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The study asserts the money is instead going into projects that free Israeli funds to be used for Jewish settlements. (In Washington, a State Department official said the report was ''misleading.'' The official said: ''It is true that the Israelis can halt implementation of programs. But we have never discerned any pattern. Besides, the majority of programs that have been proposed have been implemented.'')