What was going on when I was born?

Manhattan Eyeland, on the corner of 59th Street and Second Avenue, describes itself as an optical department store, the first in Manhattan. Within its 20,000 square feet are housed a computerized eye-examination center, offices for eye doctors, a lens-making laboratory and display areas. A showroom, called Sutton Place, boasts a sofa, a piano and vaults for eyeglasses that range in price from $200 a pair to an eye-popping $32,000. ''What Manhattan does is make a statement about the importance of eye care and eye fashion,'' said Larry Darrow, the president of the Manhattan Eyeland Corporation, which opened its store last January.

The Pope was welcomed to the United States by President Reagan in Fairbanks, Alaska. Mr. Reagan wished John Paul II well on his forthcoming trip to South Korea, Thailand, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. (Page A1, Column 6.) Syria confirmed seizing three Israelis in Lebanon and said they had been taken to Syria. Israel demanded their release. Damascus said the Israelis were saboteurs trying to infiltrate Syrian-controlled territory, but an Israeli Government spokesman said they were diplomats who had strayed into the Syrian area while on a sightseeing tour. (A1:3-4.)

IT was one of those nights. The May social season swung into high gear Tuesday with enough parties to daunt even the most dedicated. At the Coe Kerr Gallery, a preview of Jamie Wyeth's recent works benefited the Society of Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center. The scholarship fund of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture held a three-part party: an exhibition divided between the two Hirschl & Adler galleries followed by a black- tie dinner at the Plaza Hotel.

The Shell Oil Company, in a surprise move, announced late yesterday that its top five executives, including John F. Bookout, president and chief executive, had decided to sell their stock in Shell Oil to the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. The other four are Charles L. Blackburn, James B. Henderson and Frank H. Richardson, all executive vice presidents, and Klaus L. Mai, president of the Shell Development Company. Royal Dutch, which already owns 70 percent of Shell Oil, is offering $58 a share to buy the rest. But Shell Oil has officially criticized the bid as inadequate.

New York plans to begin issuing drivers' licenses with photographs on them this summer, becoming the last state in the country to do so, the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles announced today. The new system is to go into effect by July 2, according to the Commissioner, John A. Passidomo. He signed an agreement with Macro Industries Inc. of Rochester this morning to produce the new licenses.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, in a suit filed yesterday in Federal court in Los Angeles, charged that Carter Hawley Hale Stores had applied pressure on its shareholders to sell shares back to the company under what amounted to an illegal tender offer. The agency said that the big retailer had acted to persuade its shareholders that there was no chance a previously announced tender offer by The Limited Inc., of Columbus, Ohio, could succeed. The suit involves Carter Hawley's purchase of 17.9 million of its own shares, or more than 50 percent of its outstanding common, on the open market in six trading days in late April. The purchase was one of several now-contested actions the company took to blunt The Limited's tender offer.

For the first time since the early days of the auto industry, the General Motors Corporation has bought a minority interest in a small company rather than swallowing it whole. Last week, in a little-noticed move, G.M. paid $3 million for an 11 percent interest in Teknowledge Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., a small computer company that specializes in applications of artificial intelligence. To the auto giant, $3 million is cash for postage stamps. In this case, however, it is a small bet on what could be a major technological advance. The goal, G.M. officials said, is to develop automated systems that can diagnose problems in the increasingly complex cars of the future.

The Marsh & McLennan Companies told its shareholders in a letter yesterday that it now believes its after-tax losses from bond trading and related expenses will be 50 percent higher than first estimated. Marsh & McLennan disclosed on April 9 the large losses from what it believed was unauthorized trading in the long-term bond markets by one of its investment managers. Since then, it has been conducting an extensive investigation into the breadth and nature of the trading. According to the new estimate, the losses might total $165 million before taxes and about $90 million after taxes. These figures exclude funds that might be recovered through insurance or other considerations and are much higher than the $120 million before-tax loss and the $60 million after-tax loss the insurance brokerage company had projected.

Because of a mechanical error, the first five words of a sentence in the theater review of ''A Moon for the Misbegotten'' were omitted yesterday from some copies. The passage should have read: ''Perhaps critics will debate forever whether this lyrical work matches its two major predecessors in the canon, 'The Iceman Cometh' and 'Long Day's Journey Into Night.' At times, 'Moon' surpasses those other giants because O'Neill seems to have distilled its theme to its purest form and then transcended it.''

A rightist candidate for Vice President said today that Senator Jesse Helms had demanded the resignation of the United States Ambassador, accusing him of manipulating this country's elections. A spokesman for the United States Embassy called the charges ''absolutely false.'' The candidate, Hugo Barrera of the Nationalist Republican Alliance party headed by Roberto d'Aubuisson, called a news conference to read a letter he said had been telephoned to the party from the office of Senator Helms, Republican of North Carolina. (In Washington, an aide said Senator Helms had written to the President Wednesday urging that Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering be recalled for ''consistently taking action that supports only one candidate and manipulating the electoral process in a way that can be considered only an unwarranted interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation.'' The aide said there had been no reply.)

In a debate here tonight, Walter F. Mondale and Gary Hart condemned the Rev. Jesse Jackson for refusing to repudiate the support of Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who threatened a reporter for disclosing Mr. Jackson's use of anti-Semitic language. But Mr. Jackson refused to disown Mr. Farrakhan even though Mr. Mondale denounced Mr. Farrakhan's words as ''poison'' and Mr. Hart called for criminal prosecution of Mr. Farrakhan, the leader of a Black Muslim group. Instead, Mr. Jackson defended Mr. Farrakhan, who in a speech March 11 threatened Milton Coleman, a Washington Post reporter, who revealed Mr. Jackson's use of the term ''Hymie'' in referring to Jews and ''Hymietown'' in referring to New York City. Refusal to 'Repudiate' Leader In what was otherwise the mildest of the eight debates this year among the candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Mr. Jackson said it was enough that he had ''disassociated'' himself from the threat. But he said he would not ''repudiate'' Mr. Farrakhan personally.

The Air Force general who was killed in a plane crash last Thursday in Nevada was flying a Soviet MIG-23 jet that has been used in tests against American planes equipped with radar-evading technology, according to Air Force sources. The Pentagon has declined to comment officially on the accident, other than to say that the victim, Lieut. Gen. Robert M. Bond, vice commander of the Air Force Systems Command, was killed while flying ''an Air Force specially modified test craft.'' The accident occurred on the Nellis Air Force Range, part of a wasteland that also encompasses the Government's underground nuclear testing field. It is the headquarters for a number of secret programs. One is the Stealth project, which seeks to develop materials and shapes that will make weapons less detectable by hostile radar.