What was going on when I was born?

The troubled Financial Corporation of America said today that its directors had promoted three senior executives to a newly created office of the president, but it added that Charles W. Knapp would continue as chairman and chief executive. The board described the changes as ''very positive,'' but it did not indicate the reasoning behind them. Harvey Rosen, a partner in Rosen, Wachtell & Gilbert, a law firm that specializes in the financial services industry, called the changes ''an effort to stave off the regulators.'' ''But,'' he added, ''I don't think it's going to accomplish that. So long as Knapp appears to have unfettered authority, the regulators are not going to be satisfied.''

Whether Tom Ritter makes money growing soybeans this year may depend a lot on what Paul A. Volcker does. Mr. Ritter, a 32-year-old farmer in this small central Illinois town, normally pays little attention to the pronouncements of the Federal Reserve chairman or to international currency flows. Nevertheless if his farm breaks even this year, it will depend largely on how high interest rates are and how strong the dollar is. The dollar's high foreign-exchange value, which makes American products more expensive for foreigners to buy, is severely eroding the overseas market for soybeans - normally more than half of this country's soybean crop is exported each year. The weakening demand abroad, together with forecasts that this year's harvest will be far larger than last year's, has helped drive soybean prices down more than $2 a bushel from a year ago, when a serious drought pushed prices up.

Shimon Peres, head of the Labor Alignment, signed an agreement today with Ezer Weizman, drawing the former Defense Minister and his party, which has three seats in the new Parliament, firmly into the Labor camp. The agreement, reportedly a carefully constructed document, dealt a heavy blow to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's chances of continuing to govern. Israeli radio commentators spoke tonight of other small parties' moving to Labor's side, with the possibility that Mr. Peres could be able to form a government by next week. Likud Leaders Stunned News of the agreement stunned leaders of Mr. Shamir's Likud bloc who have been negotiating with Labor leaders over the establishment of a broadly based national unity government. Both sides have been equally active in seeking to form narrow coalitions after the inconclusive parliamentary elections on July 23.

The Consumer Price Index, the most widely followed gauge of inflation, rose at a somewhat faster rate in July than in the two preceding months, the Labor Department reported today. The index was up three-tenths of 1 percent last month. Although some analysts said they saw in this increase a hint of revived upward pressure on prices, the general view of Administration and private economists was that today's report showed that inflation remained well in check and that this would continue until after Election Day. ''The figures look good,'' said Larry M. Speakes, the White House spokesman. ''We're staying on the path of steady growth with lower inflation.''

The founder and father figure of the modern Republican Party limped onto the rostrum tonight, ailing but triumphant. His words were strong but the delivery was halting, and he was received more as a party elder than as an oracle. But the crowd cheered when he revived an old campaign theme and said of President Reagan, ''And in your hearts, you know he's right.'' Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona was here to speak his mind, in his inimitable, unvarnished style, and no one was going to stop him. He struck the themes he has burnished through a life in politics, ignoring White House and Reagan campaign officials, who hoped he would tone down his oratory.

Factory orders for durable goods climbed 2.2 percent in July, in a partial comeback from recent declines, the Commerce Department said today. Factory orders, a good signal of what production will be in coming months, rose $2.2 billion in July, to $101.3 billion, the department said. Since the recession low of $71.5 billion in new orders, recorded in November 1982, the pace of activity had been surging ahead, hitting a high of $105.2 billion of orders in March of this year.

Talks between the United States and Nicaragua have progressed better than either side expected, but the prospects for a negotiated solution to the two nations' differences remain remote, Reagan Administration officials said today. The talks, which began in June when Secretary of State George P. Shultz made an unexpected visit to Managua, have dealt with substantive security issues, including United States demands that Nicaragua end its support of guerrillas in El Salvador, according to the officials. ''There's been no grandstanding or stalling about procedural issues,'' an official familiar with the discussions said. ''The talks moved quickly into a serious discussion of the issues that divide us,'' he said. ''The question now is whether either country has the will to reach a settlement. The vehicle for producing one is in place and works well.'' As a result, the officials said, the discourse between Washington and Managua, although still marked by antagonistic exchanges in public, has become considerably less hostile in private.

''IT'S the relationship of a building to its landscape, whether it be urban, rural or suburban, that makes architecture challenging today,'' says Stanley Tigerman, the Chicago postmodern architect. Once, such challenges were taken for granted. In this country, Jefferson's plans for Monticello, inspired by European designs of the late 18th century, were the product of a neo-classical era when it was common practice to draw up elaborate schemes for house and grounds simultaneously - often well before the first stone was laid. Frank Lloyd Wright saw buildings and landscape as one integral vision - the house was an extension of the Middle Western prairie. However, in the heyday of the International Style most architects were more concerned with designing the buildings as ''objects''; for the most part the surroundings were deliberately disregarded.

Because of an editing error, an article Aug. 5 on the United States Army School of the Americas misidentified the opposition candidate defeated by Nicolas Ardito Barletta in presidential elections in Panama May 6. He is Dr. Arnulfo Arias Madrid, leader of the Democratic Opposition Alliance.

With many in their ranks plagued by typhoid and yellow fever, nearly 30,000 men returning from the invasion of Cuba with Theodore Roosevelt landed here in August 1898 and found a desolate fishing hamlet. Eighty-six years later, this village is once again scrambling to survive an influx of newcomers. But the wave of new arrivals is armed with dollars instead of guns, and carries condominium conversion plans instead of infectious diseases. Nonetheless, many longtime residents and local officials fear that Montauk, on the eastern tip of Long Island's South Shore, is as unprepared for the people fleeing New York City as it was for the soldiers returning from Cuba.

Shimon Peres signed a pact with Ezer Weizman, drawing the former Defense Minister and his party, which has three seats in Israel's new Parliament, firmly into the Labor alignment. The agreement, reportedly a carefully constructed document, dealt a heavy blow to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's chances of continuing to govern. (Page A1, Column 1.) Two more Soviet mine-hunting ships have arrived at the Suez Canal on their way to the Red Sea, Egyptian officials said. (A3:1-3.)

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