What was going on when I was born?

Citizens of Europe's 10 Common Market countries reflect the fractious mood of their leaders, with the French and West Germans expressing particular hostility toward Britain, according to a new poll. The poll, which was conducted for the European Parliament and a group of European newspapers and made available to The New York Times, also found that Europeans were sharply divided over moves to end all trade barriers among the Common Market countries, and that only a minority were convinced that a united Europe would improve the lot of their children. The survey, called the Euro-Barometer, involved interviews with 9,746 people in the 10 countries that make up the Common Market. Reflects Budget Dispute The survey comes as the Common Market is embroiled in a sharp budget dispute, provoked largely by Britain's unhappiness over the community's spending practices and its agricultural program. Jacques-Rene Rabier, the European Commission's consultant on public opinion and the supervisor of the poll, said that in comparison with earlier surveys in the Euro-Barometer series, the latest poll reflected a modest decline in popular confidence in the Common Market.

At about this time of year, thousands of scuba divers begin exploring lake bottoms and coastal shoals in the New York area in search of shipwrecks and relics, including some that have lain undisturbed for generations. Many take home souvenirs of their dives, looking on their hunt for relics as harmless. But local archeologists say a growing number of divers are removing irreplaceable clues to the region's maritime past and, in some cases, damaging or destroying wrecks that date back to Colonial times. In Lake George in upstate New York, for example, divers have ripped apart wooden boats that were scuttled in the 1750's during the French and Indian War, authorities say. In waters off Montauk Point, divers with crowbars have pried loose cannonballs and ruined rigging from a British man-of- war that sank during the American Revolution.

Bernard Krimm, a 36-year-old Chicagoan, may receive as much as $325 in extra cash this year from an innovative health plan. The money will be added to his pay as a speechwriter if he stays away from hospitals and doctors. Under a similar plan, Diane Giacomini, 31, a school board clerk in Mendocino, Calif., has accumulated $800 in an employer-financed ''stay well'' account, money she did not spend on her health. She will get this money, plus any future accumulations, when she retires or leaves her job. Their employers and hundreds of others across the country are offering a variety of such incentives to tens of thousands of workers, in a sometimes controversial campaign to curb the rise in health costs, which are still rising faster than the cost of living.

Analysts expect Iran to begin its ''final offensive'' against Iraq soon. Military analysis, page 4. WASHINGTON, May 27 - The Reagan Administration has decided to double the number of Stinger antiaircraft missiles being sent to Saudi Arabia, Administration officials said today. The weapons are intended for use against possible Iranian air attacks on oil tankers, oil fields and desalinization plants.

A section of the television airwaves once reserved for programming by colleges and schools has become the latest battleground in an intense struggle to exploit the commercial potential of pay television. Hundreds of colleges and companies are vying for licenses to broadcast on the microwave section of the airwaves in an electronic gold rush set off by a Federal Communications Commission decision a year ago. The competition for the new licenses has pitted a number of nonprofit institutions against each other. In one instance, the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges has accused Columbia University of ''acting as a front'' for a private company. John Mason Harding, general counsel for Columbia, defended its involvement as a ''wonderful opportunity for both the United States and Columbia.''

Walter F. Mondale promised last month to shut down the delegate committees formed to support his candidacy and return all the money they had collected from labor union sources. But so far he has not fulfilled that promise. Officials of Mr. Mondale's campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination said $400,000 had been put into an escrow account at the D.C. National Bank here for repayments, but the money will not be returned until the Federal Election Commission gives its approval. A senior campaign official said the process was proving to be a ''logistical nightmare'' and could take months. 'We Have to Request' David Ifshin, general counsel of the Mondale campaign, said: ''We have had difficulty persuading the delegates, who were acting perfectly legally, to cease and desist. We have to request, we cannot tell the delegate committees to shut down.''

The invasion of nearby Grenada last October brought unaccustomed international exposure to this impoverished Caribbean island nation. As chairman of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, Prime Minister Mary Eugenia Charles was in the forefront in the deliberations surrounding the invasion, which she and the heads of five other island member-nations urged the United States to lead. ''Some people, they even began to say our name right,'' one resident said of the invasion. ''It put us on the map.'' Dominica - the name is pronounced Dom-in-EE-ka - is an English speaking nation that gained its independence from Britain in 1978. It is not to be confused with the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic.

A group of 26 former Government leaders concluded a three-day meeting today with a call for a meeting between President Reagan and Konstantin U. Chernenko, the Soviet leader.

A bomb killed a paramilitary civil guard captain and seriously wounded his wife today in an attack believed to have been carried out by Basque separatist guerrillas to coincide with an Armed Forces Day parade, the police said. The bomb exploded under the car of the captain.

President Kenneth D. Kaunda of Zambia, who has assumed a prime mediatory role in efforts to end the guerrilla war in South-West Africa, said today that a settlement would be ''jammed'' as long as the United States insisted on linking the issue with the presence of Cuban troops in Angola. ''There is a need for your great country to revise its stand on the presence of Cuban troops in Angola,'' Mr. Kaunda told Chester A. Crocker, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, before the two men opened private talks in Lusaka, the Zambian capital. Mr. Kaunda said that as long as the United States insisted on demanding a withdrawal of the estimated 25,000 Cuban soldiers, ''then the withdrawal process of South African troops from southern Angola and from Namibia itself will be jammed.''

Voters chose among candidates for 1,592 municipal offices across the nation today in an election that opposition parties tried to make a test of President Jaime Lusinchi's economic austerity policies. Nearly eight million people, half the population, were eligible to vote, but the early turnout appeared to be light. There were few waiting lines at polling places in and near the capital.

Residents in this northwestern city said today that the immediate cause of rioting last week was the beating by policemen of a pregnant woman, who later died of her injuries. They said it was the latest in a series of such incidents of brutality against civilians. But they also said the disturbances grew out of unhappiness over rising food prices and a general sense of hostility toward the Government. The disturbances were an unusual event in the 13-year rule of Jean-Claude Duvalier, who succeeded his late father, Francois, as President in 1971.