What was going on when I was born?

FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 1984 Companies Tiffany will be sold by Avon Products to an investor group led by Tiffany's chairman for $135.5 million in cash. The ownership shift may mark a change in the jewelry chain's effort in the past decade to reach out to a broader range of consumers. (Page D1.) ITT has signed a preliminary agreement to sell its baking unit, the ITT Continental Baking Company, to Ralston Purina for $475 million in cash. ITT said it expected to show a gain of more than $100 million after taxes on the sale. (D1.)

A dispatch from Paris on Aug. 15 about a dispute over unspent funds held by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization incorrectly described a fee to be paid by the agency to a Washington-based public relations firm. The firm, Wagner & Baroody, is to receive about $15,000 a month.

An article in some editions of Metropolitan Report yesterday on appointments by Governor Cuomo incorrectly described the racial makeup of the Port Authority board. It currently includes one black.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 1984 International An accord for an Israeli Government has been reached by Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, according to the Israeli radio. Broadcasts said the agreement called for Mr. Peres, leader of the Labor Party, and Mr. Shamir, head of the Likud bloc, to alternate as Prime Minister in a national unity government. (Page A1, Columns 1-2.) Moscow's handling of the crisis generated a year ago when a Soviet fighter shot down a South Korean airliner with 269 people aboard prompted worldwide criticism and strengthened Washington in its relations with the Kremlin, according to Administration officials. (A3:5-6.) National

For the nation's troubled steelmakers, an increasingly popular strategy for survival has been diversification. Armco Inc., the fifth-largest steelmaker, blazed that trail decades ago. But if the strategy has had mixed results for some in the industry, it has been particularly unkind to its pioneer: Although Armco's steel operations currently show a profit, some of its other businesses are dragging down overall results. While many of the major steelmakers were reporting second-quarter profits, Armco posted a loss of $14.1 million, even though its carbon steel operations showed an operating profit of $23 million.

Calypso bands will clash in Brooklyn this weekend, carpenters will put up a house in the middle of 42d Street, poets will be reading their works at Madison Square Garden, and plumbers will be marching up Fifth Avenue with the tools of their trade. It is all part of the way New York will celebrate Labor Day, the city's own holiday. Labor Day originated in New York 102 years ago before it spread to the rest of the country. For many people, Labor Day also represents the last fling of summer. It is the last chance for some at vacation homes and the last homeworkless weekend for most youngsters. And for this weekend at least, the city's beaches, pools and parks will still be on summer schedules.

What more than 80 years of healthy suspicion and rivalry have joined together New York Telephone is about to put asunder. Tonight at midnight, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island will get a new area code: 718. And while Manhattan and the Bronx will remain joined in 212, the impending change has brought confusion and anger to Flatbush, Corona and Todt Hill and confirmed yet again some ancient and deep-seated strains of outer-borough paranoia. During what the telephone company, like a stern parent, calls a ''permissive dialing period,'' use of the code will be optional until Dec. 31. After that, calls made without the area code will be intercepted, and callers will be given recorded dialing instructions. Save for the new prefix, no telephone numbers will change.

John A. Zaccaro was removed yesterday as overseer of the financial affairs of an elderly woman from whose assets he had borrowed $175,000. The judge who removed him said he had found ''no suggestion of dishonesty or malicious intent'' when Mr. Zaccaro borrowed the money for the real-estate business of which Mr. Zaccaro and his wife, Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro, were officers. Nonetheless, ''the rule is inflexible that a trustee shall not place himself in a position where his interest is or may be in conflict with his duty,'' the justice, Edwin Kassoff of State Supreme Court in Queens, said in a six- page decision. ''There is no necessity for finding malicious intent, deliberate wrongdoing or criminal conduct,'' he added. ''The mere appearance of impropriety must be assiduously avoided.''

The ITT Corporation announced yesterday that it had signed a preliminary agreement to sell its ITT Continental Baking Company to the Ralston Purina Company for $475 million in cash. The bakery sale would constitute the largest divestiture and the second-largest financial transaction in ITT's history. In 1970, ITT acquired the Hartford Fire Insurance Company for $951 million. ''This was the biggest as well as the last food operation divestiture for ITT,'' said Carol Neves, who tracks ITT for Merrill Lynch. ''The deal should result in a nonrecurring, 60-cent-a-share gain this year. Assuming they use the money to pay down high-cost, short- term domestic debt, I think it will have, on an annualized basis, a 20- cent-a-share positive effect on earnings.''

Governor Cuomo said yesterday that he would not give assurances to New York City hospitals that he would approve an increase in revenue to pay for the strike settlement with the hospital workers union. ''But I don't blame them for trying to squeeeze out a few dollars more,'' Mr. Cuomo said. The private, nonprofit hospitals in New York City said Wednesday that they would not begin paying the 5 percent wage increase provided for in each year of a two-year contract until they received ''assurances that the dollars that the state said would be available will in fact be available.'' William Abelow, the chief negotiator for the League of Voluntary Hospitals and Homes, the bargaining group for the hospitals, said the league could abrogate the entire settlement ''if these assurances are not received from the state.''

''We're happy the orbiter and its crew finally left town. The launch team is ecstatic.

Eight hundred pounds of black-and-white Holstein calf named Baby suddenly balked and 75 pounds of Jarad Kramer, his hand clutching the calf's halter, tumbled backward in a heap on the sawdust-covered floor. Setting his jaw, 9-year-old Jarad jumped up and tugged 8-month-old Baby into a huge ring layered with wood chips to join two other Holstein calves from Erie County in a beauty contest pitting them against three-calf teams from other counties. ''I call her Baby or Moose, but her real name is Senator,'' said Jarad after the judging, a pale yellow ribbon denoting seventh place sticking out his back pocket. Jarad, Baby and her yellow ribbon - they make up one tiny scene, one of hundreds that play out in the helter-skelter of New York State's 138th State Fair here. The 10-day event runs through Monday.