What was going on when I was born?

Owners of the Seabrook nuclear power plant today unanimously approved a plan that they said should save Seabrook's first reactor and avert bankruptcy for the plant's main owner. The 16 utility-owners of the New Hampshire plant announced the agreement following an eight-hour closed-door meeting. Robert Hildreth of Merrill Lynch Capital Markets said the plan eliminates the main obstacle of earlier proposed solutions to the Seabrook crisis - making other owners responsible for the payments of the main owner, the Public Service Company of New Hampshire.

A Federal district judge ordered Attorney General William French Smith today to seek an independent counsel to investigate possible crimes by top officials in the transfer of documents to the 1980 Presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan from the Carter White House. In issuing the order, Judge Harold H. Greene noted that it was the first time any judge had ordered appointment of an independent counsel, or special prosecutor, over the objection of an attorney general. The Justice Department said it would appeal and seek a stay of the ruling. Judge Greene rejected Mr. Smith's argument that no judge had legal authority to review the Justice Department's conclusion that there was ''no credible evidence that the transfer violated any criminal law.''

A report in the Bridge column May 9 about the Long Island Regional Championships in Hempstead misidentified one of the two Flight B Pairs winners. He is Leonard Helfgott of Teaneck, N.J.

A fire that killed eight people and injured seven Friday night in a haunted house attraction at an amusement park here was started by a malfunctioning strobe light used to create an eerie scene, officials said tonight. George H. Piercy Jr., secretary of the township's Fire Department, said a preliminary investigation had found the blaze at the Haunted Castle at the Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park started when electricity built up in a strobe that had failed to discharge properly. That caused the strobe to short-circuit or explode and set the attraction on fire, he said. The blaze, whipped by strong winds, swept through the complex of 17 linked aluminum trailers.

After more than a decade of technical development and perhaps the most controversy over any modern weapon, the Air Force's MX strategic missile is once again a hot political issue in Congress. By engineering standards alone, the missile would probably have entered the popular consciousness in a way other Pentagon products seldom do. The missile, carrying 10 to 12 warheads, is designed to fly at least 6,000 miles and hit its target within 300 feet. But at a time when the West has been seized by wide-ranging debate about the cost, both fiscal and moral, of all nuclear weapons, the MX has come to symbolize far more than just a technological marvel. For its proponents, the MX has always meant a crucial element in the Soviet-American equation of nuclear deterrence. For its opponents, it is a wasteful, destabilizing weapon that represents the very worst instinct in the nuclear arms race.

A dispatch from Omaha yesterday omitted a name from the list of active Democratic candidates competing in the Nebraska Presidential primary today. Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. is on the ballot in addition to Gary Hart, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Walter F. Mondale.

Governor Cuomo said today that it was futile to draw up plans to protect civilians in a nuclear war, but his chief spokesman said that the Governor would not halt the work of state employees engaged in such work. Mr. Cuomo said that prayer was the best preparation for a nuclear attack. He also urged everyone to read ''The Butter Battle Book'' by Dr. Seuss for a clearer understanding of the issues.

National Money Market Services, a brokerage firm that arranged for New York school districts to invest millions of dollars in sophisticated Government securities transactions, was founded less than three years ago by two men without experience in securities trading, according to public records in New York and California. Now, the company and its founders are involved in widening investigations by state and Federal authorities in the aftermath of the bankruptcy filing two weeks ago by the Lion Capital Group, a small Government securities dealer. More than three dozen New York school districts and counties were persuaded by National Money Market to invest some $20 million with Lion. That money is now tied up while the courts resolve the issues in the bankruptcy and sort out who should get repaid and when, and how much.

A STUDENT at a community college who carries a regular load of courses and makes normal progress can graduate in two years, but at some community colleges in the City University of New York not even 1 percent of the students get degrees in the traditional two-year time period. The idea of making certain that such students, once they get into the pipeline of higher education, are able to complete college is emerging as a principal concern among educators around the country. They say that with the difficulty of attracting students in the first place, more should be done to retain them once they are enrolled. Retention is of particular interest at urban institutions, where students from disadvantaged backgrounds have become an important new constituency for higher education. In the 1970's the emphasis was on getting these students into college, but now that they are much more likely to continue their studies beyond high school attention is shifting to issues involving their retention.

CHEMOTHERAPY, once the black sheep of cancer treatments, has become the leading weapon for increasing the number of patients who can be cured of cancer. At the same time, researchers are reducing the debilitating side effects that chemotherapy patients have typically had to endure. Furthermore, new drugs, and new methods of using old ones, hold out the promise that there will soon be significant improvements in fighting some of the most common cancer killers. ''When chemotherapy was developed in the 1950's, cancer survival statistics were pretty much static,'' observed Dr. Bruce Chabner, head of the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Treatment. ''Surgery had gone as far as it could go in curing local disease, and the radiation therapy of the 60's and 70's only improved the cure of local and regional disease.''

Sixteen of the nation's leading banks - with the tacit support of the Federal Reserve System - joined yesterday to make $4.5 billion in credit available to the troubled Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago, the nation's eighth-largest bank. Continental announced that the 16 banks, led by the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, had agreed to make the credit available for 30 days. Several of the banks said they were participating in the credit only because the Federal Reserve, the nation's central bank, had indicated it would stand behind Continental, which suffered a severe run Friday when several large foreign insitutions, especially in the Far East, withdrew their deposits. Such large deposits are not insured, and the failure of a bank the size of Continental could seriously undermine the foreign banks, causing a wave of failures worldwide. Bank Run Followed Rumors The run Friday resulted from rumors indicating that Continental was in deep financial trouble and that officials in the United States were seeking to have Continental acquired by a foreign bank. The rumors were vehemently denied by Continental officials and by the Comptroller of the Currency in Washington. As a result of the withdrawals, Continental was forced to borrow $3.6 billion Friday from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

The Calendar listing on the Washington Talk page yesterday incorrectly reported the date of a news conference scheduled by the economists Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison. It will be held 10 A.M. Thursday at the National Press Club.