What was going on when I was born?

After watching interest rates climb to unexpected heights this spring, many investors and economists are convinced that rates will continue to rise in the second half, although not so much as in the first half. Drawing on a lesson learned in the first 18 months of the economic recovery, when high interest rates failed to damp the expansion, analysts expect continued strong economic growth this year. An expanding economy leads to heavier credit demands from businesses and consumers, and those demands will more than offset any small decline in the still-huge borrowing needs of the United States Treasury. ''The biggest suprise of the first half was how high rates went,'' said Alan C. Lerner, senior vice president at the Bankers Trust Company. In the bond market, where yields rose most sharply, ''investor psychology and inflationary expectations were distinctly negative for the market,'' he added. Investors are still nervous, Mr. Lerner added, but ''it's not likely we will see the same kind of increases in the second half as in the first.''

The chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights has charged that President Reagan is playing politics with civil rights. Clarence M. Pendleton Jr., the commission chairman, who was appointed by Mr. Reagan, chided the President in two letters made public today for several recent steps designed to persuade blacks and other minority groups that the Administration had been fair to them. Mr. Pendleton, a conservative Republican from California, asserted that the President's actions ''do mayhem to the constitution and civil rights laws.'' ''I will never knowingly attend any meeting you or members of your Administration convene exclusively for black appointees,'' Mr. Pendleton said in a letter to the President. ''Such meetings are contradictory to what you and I believe about working toward a race- and gender-neutral and colorblind society.''

The rapid acceleration in the drive for a woman as the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate has created a new set of political complications for women who are activists within the party and for the campaign of Walter F. Mondale. Among the activists, these complications are reflected in the intensifying debate on how to promote the selection of a woman without putting destructive political pressures on Mr. Mondale. Leaders of the feminist movement appeared today to be split into a conciliatory faction that favors polite appeals to Mr. Mondale and a militant faction. The latter group includes prominent women who are speaking of floor fights or walkouts at the Democratic National Convention if Mr. Mondale chooses a man as a running mate.

''A mandatory death statute simply cannot be reconciled with the scrupulous care the legal system demands to insure that the death penalty fits the individual and the crime.

Pressed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the management of the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago has been rapidly shrinking the bank as part of a strategy to find a long-term solution to its problems. ''No matter how you handle the Continental situation, the bank will have to shrink in size,'' said William M. Isaac, chairman of the F.D.I.C., in an interview yesterday. Mr. Isaac said progress was being made in setting Continental on a solid financial footing, but he said a number of approaches were being considered, ranging from finding a merger partner to allowing the bank to remain independent. According to people in the banking industry, the plan is to reduce Continental's assets to between $20 billion and $25 billion, or about half its size at the end of 1983. The bank's assets then, together with those of the Continental Illinois Corporation, its parent holding company, were $42 billion.

The World Bank announced today that it would cut its lending rate for developing countries to 9.89 percent, from 10.08 percent. It was the fourth consecutive semiannual reduction under a policy in which rates on new loans are tied to the bank's own cost of borrowing. Since the policy was instituted on July 1, 1982, the bank has disbursed $4 billion to nearly 100 developing countries.

President Reagan agreed to explore Moscow's offer to begin talks on limiting antisatellite weapons even before the Administration had decided what its bargaining position would be, officials said. Mr. Reagan's decision was generally seen as reflecting his determination to retain a diplomatic and political initiative. (Page A1, Column 1.) The Navy may use MIG-21 fighters in pilot training. A major defense corporation, the LTV Aerospace and Defense Company, has arranged to buy the Soviet-designed jets from Chinese production lines. (A6:1.)

CORRECTIONS A headline in Business Day Friday incorrectly described the status of the Coastal Corporation's stock. It is continuing to trade on the New York Stock Exchange, pending a move by the exchange to delist it.

Warner Communications Inc., giving up its 18-month effort to rebuild a business that once flourished with Pac-Man video games and the boom in home computers, yesterday sold nearly all of its troubled Atari unit. As a result of the sale and writedowns, Warner said it would report a second-quarter loss of $425 million. Atari was sold to a new company headed by Jack Tramiel, a longtime participant in the home computer business. Analysts said the sale promised a new round of competition in the industry. It was Mr. Tramiel, the aggressive, cost-cutting former chief executive of Commodore International Ltd., who led the price-cutting war that buried Atari last year, many industry experts said.

Senator Gary Hart is well ahead of any competitor as the choice of rank- and-file Democrats for the Vice-Presidential nomination, and if he were on the ticket he would halve President Reagan's current substantial lead over Walter F. Mondale, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll. With Mr. Mondale, the likely Democratic nominee, under mounting pressures to name a woman as his running mate, the poll showed Senator Hart, a Colorado Democrat, the preference of 23 percent of registered Democrats. Half gave no preference. Preferences on No. 2 Job The Rev. Jesse Jackson was the second Vice-Presidential choice, named by 9 percent. Mayor Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco got the support of 3 percent and Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro of Queens and Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles were cited by 2 percent each. In all, 10 percent picked a woman candidate or said they would like to see a woman on the ticket, while 12 percent picked a black or said they wanted a black on the ticket.

Belzberg. Pickens. Bass. Boesky. Posner. Some of the names behind today's giant deals, page D6. A takeover wave is rolling across corporate America. And Wall Street is caught up in a frenzy of activity as, month after month, its deal makers put together hundreds of buyouts, takeovers and mergers. Since the first of the year, there have been 15 billion-dollar deals, more deals of that size than have taken place in any previous year.

THERE are 126 medical schools in the country and the desire of students to gain admission to them is so intense that the creation of each additional school is a major event in the academic world, reopening the debate over how many physicians are needed and focusing anew on the huge expense of medical education. The latest effort to establish a new medical school advanced a step last week in New York City as trustees of the City University affirmed their intent to build a medical school that would be based at the City College campus in Manhattan and that would largely use teaching hospitals in Queens. Priorities of the medical school would be to increase the number of black and Hispanic physicians and to provide more doctors to deliver primary and geriatric care in areas that are medically underserved. The City University's quest for a medical school is notable not only in the way that the traditional obstacles are being approached, but also in the manner in which delicate negotiations have been used behind the scenes to surmount sensitive political and ethnic issues peculiar to the institution.