What was going on when I was born?

Israeli Air Force jets attacked a Palestinian guerrilla base today in the Bekaa region in eastern Lebanon and reportedly inflicted heavy casualties. Israel said the base had been used to prepare for raids against Israeli troops. The Voice of Lebanon radio station of the Christian Phalangist Party said as many as 100 people might have been killed when two Israeli bombers destroyed several buildings at the base in Mejdel Anjar, about three miles from the Lebanese-Syrian border. 25 Reported Dead According to the radio, which quoted a correspondent on the scene, 25 bodies had been recovered and 75 others were believed to be still buried in the rubble of a three-story building used as a security and intelligence office.

A Federal appeals court in New York has ordered the Social Security Administration to restore benefits denied to 50,000 mentally ill people in the state under what it called a ''clandestine policy'' of determining eligibility. In the unanimous decision Monday evening, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit criticized the Reagan Administration, which has resisted previous court orders to re-evaluate the denials of disability benefits. The appeals court upheld a February 1983 decision by Judge Jack B. Weinstein of Federal District Court in Brooklyn. Judge Weinstein, in his ruling, had accused the the Social Security Administration of engaging in a ''covert policy'' from 1978 to early 1983 to deny applicants for disability benefits the right to be assessed properly.

RESTAURANTGOERS will never agree on where to find the best pesto, but when it comes to wine prices they appear to be of one mind: wine prices in restaurants are too high. A few comments on this subject appeared here last week and the calls and letters continue to arrive. ''The wine is starting to cost more than the food,'' one reader wrote, ''and that's ridiculous.'' ''I see fewer people drinking wine,'' said another. ''It's sad, but it's just what some of these guys deserve.''

When visitors entered Charles Knapp's spacious office atop a Los Angeles skyscraper, their attention was invariably drawn to a ship's telegraph, the device sea captains use to signal the engine room for power. As helmsman of the Financial Corporation of America, Mr. Knapp had always been proud that he had his telegraph set at flank speed, the fastest a ship can go. Yesterday, recognizing that Financial had gone too far, too fast into uncharted waters, Charles William Knapp announced his resignation as chairman and chief executive officer of the company, parent of the American Savings and Loan Association. He had built that unit into the nation's largest and, for a time, most profitable thrift institution, employing a brash entrepreneurial style that thumbed its nose at the industry's traditional caution and took risky bets on the direction of interest rates. A Tempestuous Summer ''There was a basic difference in philosophy between Financial Corporation, as personified by Charlie, and the rest of the industry,'' recalls Anthony M. Frank, chairman and chief executive of the First Nationwide Financial Corporation, the parent of another major California savings and loan institution. A spokesman for Financial Corporation declined requests for interviews with Mr. Knapp.

SINCE it was issued in paperback in 1946, Dr. Benjamin Spock's ''Baby and Child Care'' has made publishing history. The book went through 167 printings in its first 10 years, but since then, a spokesman for Pocket Books said recently, it has had ''so many printings we can't keep count.'' Thirty million copies are in print. And in his recent book ''Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America,'' Kenneth C. Davis says the Spock book ''has become the second-best-selling book in American history, trailing only the Bible.'' Dr. Spock's book, which is updated periodically, continues to sell more than 250,000 copies a year. Also still selling are the several books by Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, the Harvard University pediatrician who has been called ''the new Dr. Spock.'' Among his books still in print are ''Infants and Mothers,'' first published in 1969 and since updated; ''On Becoming a Family,'' and ''Toddlers and Parents.'' But these days books by Dr. Spock and Dr. Brazelton are increasingly sharing space on the night table with other books about child care, pregnancy, birth and a wide range of related topics.

The Justice Department, completing a court-ordered review, said today that it could support five of eight proposals by Bell regional telephone companies to diversify. The ventures that were approved include the offering of real estate management services by U S West and Pacific Telesis; the sale or lease of office products, such as computers and word processors made by other companies, proposed by Nynex and Pacific Telesis, and the provision of financing to companies leasing office equipment from Bell Atlantic. The department also approved the provision of consulting and management services outside the United States to foreign governments or entities by Ameritech and Pacific Telesis, and a bid by U S West to seek a Federal license for a cellular mobile telephone system to serve oil rigs and shipping in the Gulf of Mexico.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29, 1984 Companies A former reporter for The Wall Street Journal was charged, along with two others, with stealing from The Journal and defrauding its readers by using advance information about articles in the newspaper to profit in stock market trading. The criminal indictment was based in part on the novel legal theory that a newspaper reporter defrauds readers by failing to report personal financial interests in his articles' subjects. The charges were believed to be the first brought against a reporter for use of information in forthcoming articles. Attorneys for the three men contested the legal reasoning behind the Federal charges. (Page A1.) The Financial Corporation of America's chairman is resigning . Charles W. Knapp will be replaced by William J. Popejoy, a former chief executive of the American Savings and Loan Association before it was acquired by Financial Corporation. American Savings and Loan is now the nation's largest thrift unit. The Federal Home Loan Bank Board endorsed Mr. Popejoy's selection, and expressed hope that it would bring stability to the company, which lost $107.5 million in the second quarter. (D1.) Mr. Popejoy's appointment drew enthusiastic responses from within the industry. (D6.)

Maurice J. Spectoroff rummaged through a stack of small boxes labeled ''The Bowery,'' ''Name Dropper,'' ''Kalamazoo'' and ''Mohawk'' before pulling out a 4 1/2-inch brass tube with a little tower on top, a Lilliputian submarine. ''You can go skiing with it,'' he offered. ''You can go camping with it. It comes in very handy. People go for a walk in the woods and get lost. They start playing their kazoo and you can find them.''

Charles W. Knapp, the chairman and chief executive of the Financial Corporation of America, said today that he was resigning both posts as well as his seat on the company's board of directors. Financial Corporation is the parent of the American Savings and Loan Association, the nation's largest thrift institution. His successor, named late this afternoon, is William J. Popejoy, who is 46 years old and was president and chief executive of American Savings before it was acquired by Financial Corporation last year. The appointment of Mr. Popejoy, who is a veteran of the thrift industry, was strongly endorsed by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board.

A 47-day strike against 30 hospitals and 15 nursing homes in New York City officially ended yesterday when the hospital workers' union announced that its members had overwhelmingly ratified an agreement. The strike, the longest and largest health care walkout in the city's history, affected 18,000 patients and 52,000 workers at the private, nonprofit hospitals and homes. Officials said that workers would begin returning to their jobs today and that most of them would be back by tomorrow or Friday. However, some decided not to wait for the ratification announcement and went back yesterday morning.

An article Aug. 21 on a Jewish wedding in Egypt misstated the date of the last such wedding. It was 1978.

Clutching a Bible, the preacher at the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah's Witnesses at Central Park West and 102d Street railed against ''discos, videos and designer clothes.'' The teen-agers in the congregation, with skinny leather ties and slicked-back hair, shifted in their seats and stared at their shoes. Fundamentalist preachers of all faiths have long warned about the evils of contemporary culture. But for the Jehovah's Witnesses, the message is more difficult to get across these days because of the popularity of the most famous Witness of all - Michael Jackson, whose rock music and videos have made him one of contemporary culture's biggest stars. Coming to terms with Michael Jackson is only one of several problems facing the Witnesses, whose world headquarters are in Brooklyn Heights. Although they say they have more members than ever before, and their two magazines are among the most widely circulated publications in the world, dissension in their ranks and opposition on their home turf have never been more vocal.