What was going on when I was born?

The United States and Japan, as expected, announced a major agreement today that could substantially expand the international role of the yen and provide new business opportunities in Japan for American financiers. Japan also agreed to take ''step-by- step'' action to relax tight Government controls of its domestic capital markets. But the reaction was guarded among some analysts in the United Excerpts from paper, page D6. States, Exporters welcomed the move, with one representative calling it ''an important first step.'' but international experts speculated that as a result the yen could become even cheaper in the short term.

Roll-call vote, page B4. ALBANY, Wednesday, May 30 - The State Assembly, in a rebuff to Governor Cuomo, refused early today to raise New York State's drinking age to 21 from 19. The 80-to-69 vote followed nearly seven hours of emotional debate and several days of intensive lobbying by the Governor, who said the bill was as important as any measure facing the Legislature this year. In the roll-call vote, which was completed shortly after 1 A.M., there was no pattern of political or regional voting.

GLUTINOUS rice is a most misunderstood grain, particularly in the West, where it is not as well known as other varieties of rice. Many people know it as ''sweet rice,'' the label under which it is most often sold, or as ''sticky rice.'' Eaten widely throughout China and the rest of Asia, it is used in a broad and varied range of food preparations from soups to snacks, from first to main courses. While it is also used to make desserts, it is by no means confined to sweet, dessertlike dishes, as many people seem to believe. Flour made from glutinous rice is also used throughout China for dumplings, cakes and steamed loaves of dough. Not sweet in the sugary sense, glutinous rice, after cooking, can impart a certain pleasant taste to the tongue, which accounts for the term sweet. It is certainly sticky, however, particularly if boiled.

Teledyne Inc., the electronics and manufacturing conglomerate, said yesterday that it would buy back all 8.7 million shares tendered under a $200-a-share offer for its own stock that expired last Friday. The total cost to the company for the repurchase will be $1.74 billion, making it one of the largest corporate buybacks on record. Earlier this month, the company said it would buy back about 5 million shares for $1 billion.

An additional Air Force aerial tanker and 400 Stinger antiaircraft missiles have been sent to Saudi Arabia, the United States announced. The arms were sent to help the Saudis improve their air, sea and land defenses against Iran. (Page A1, Column 6.) Iran vowed to fight any American military intervention in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, Iraq reiterated its pledge to continue its air and sea blockade of Iran's main oil export terminal until Iran responded to appeals to end the war. (A1:4-5.)

''The dust was on my husband's clothes. It was in his lunch.

The United States announced today that it had sent to Saudi Arabia 400 Stinger antiaircraft missiles and an additional Air Force aerial tanker because of a ''grave concern with the growing escalation'' in the Persian Gulf conflict. President Reagan signed the necessary papers this morning authorizing the transfer to the Saudis of the Stinger missiles and 200 shoulder-held launchers, which arrived in Saudi Arabia on Monday, according to Alan D. Romberg, a State Department spokesman. The missiles and the aerial tanker are to help Saudi Arabia improve its air, sea and ground defenses against Iran, which in the last two weeks has started to attack ships in the Persian Gulf in response to Iraqi attacks on shipping in Iranian waters. This was the first concrete action by the United States since the conflict between Iran and Iraq widened two weeks ago as the result of Iranian retaliation for Iraqi attacks on ships near Iran's Kharg Island oil terminal.

To demonstrate its sophistication in designing fighter planes before the Air Force selects a prime contractor for its next combat plane, the Grumman Corporation has built a pair of ''Star Wars'' aircraft largely from spare parts. Like so much else about the planes, called X-29's, their design borrows from the past - all the way back to the Wright brothers. Yet it shatters barriers that have limited decades of aeronautical architecture. Indeed, the X-29 is intended to feint and dodge - fight - at supersonic speeds and fly farther and faster for a given engine thrust than any current aircraft. ''This is Star Wars in terms of what we're flying today,'' said Glenn Spacht, the project's deputy director.

An article in Metropolitan Report on May 3 about James H. Kinsella, the former Hartford Probate judge, misidentified his relationship with the guardian and a co-conservator in an estate case. The guardian is Paul Aparo, a former law clerk of the judge; the co-conservator is Alexander Goldfarb, a friend and former college classmate of the judge.

With increasing frequency, Federal courts in the South are ordering local governments to abandon at-large election systems as racially discriminatory. The recent flurry of decisions will have the immediate effect of opening the door for the election of more black officials throughout the region, civil rights lawyers say. ''Not since the passage in 1964 of the original Civil Rights Act, which had an overnight impact on discrimination in public accommodations, have we seen anything quite as dramatic as this,'' said Laughlin McDonald, executive director of the Southern region of the American Civil Liberties Union in Atlanta, who has played a leading role in challenging the at-large voting systems. Nine Switches in a Month In the last month alone, nine mostly rural jurisdictions in Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama, among them county governments, school boards and city councils, have been forced to give up at-large elections in favor of single-district elections. The changes were a result of court orders or negotiated settlements in lawsuits by civil rights groups or the Justice Department.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 30, 1984 Companies Liggett & Myers Tobacco is to be sold to a group consisting of management, employees and outside investors under an agreement with its owner, Grand Metropolitan. Liggett, the leader in the market for generic cigarettes, would bring $325 million under terms of the deal - a price some analysts consider low. (D1.) Saul P. Steinberg said he wants to unseat Disney's board; last week he indicated that he was putting together a group of investors for a takeover. The apparent change in plans sent the stock down $3.625, to $64.125. Mr. Steinberg also filed suit to block Disney's deal to purchase Arvida for $200 million in stock. (D1.)

THE Boston Culinary Historians meet once a month to discuss the history of bread, Japanese cooking traditions, the problems that women have as chefs in Paris restaurants or the regional cuisines of the Germans in 19th-century Pennsylvania. The jolliness of the group's meetings does not belie a serious approach to a new and growing area of interest: culinary history, or the study of what people eat and why; of how we grow, prepare and consume the foods we eat, and of how culinary habits evolve and change throughout history. It is a study that is commanding the scholarly attention of academics and dedicated amateurs in England, Europe and the United States. Ten or 15 years ago, culinary history may have seemed peripheral if not downright trivial from the perspective of professional historians. Suddenly it has become respectable subject matter for dissertations, academic journals and learned societies. While cultural historians examine medieval manuscripts and archeologists sift ancient sands for evidence of what our remotest ancestors ate, others deal with contemporary matters, charting, for instance, the evolution of American diet by cataloguing changes in ''The Fannie Farmer Cookbook'' from its first publication in 1896 or examining the influences of fast foods and ethnic foods on how and what we eat today.