What was going on when I was born?

The United Automobile Workers and the General Motors Corporation reached agreement early today on a tentative three-year contract providing wage increases, added pension benefits and job security. In another major settlement that includes new provisions to protect the jobs of workers threatened by layoffs, the United Mine Workers and the Bituminous Coal Operators Association agreed today on a 40-month contract. (Page 10.) The General Motors settlement, at the end of a 16-hour bargaining session, came six days after the union began selective strikes that shut down over half of the manufacturer's car and truck production, idling about 110,000 workers. The pact covers 350,000 workers.

President Reagan, in an effort to break the deadlock in arms-control negotiations, will propose to Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko next week that the United States and the Soviet Union step up their contacts through more Cabinet- level meetings, Administration officials said today. The officials said it was hoped that the increased contacts would lead eventually to a meeting between Mr. Reagan and the Soviet leader, Konstantin U. Chernenko. The purpose of the proposal, which will be made when Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gromyko confer at the White House next Friday, will be to overcome the refusal of the Soviet Union to resume negotiations in Geneva on medium-range and strategic arms. Moscow has said it will not resume talks on those subjects until the North Atlantic Treaty Organization dismantles the new American missiles being deployed in Europe.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will investigate the embassy bombing. Walter F. Mondale accused the Administration of allowing security lapses. Page 4. WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 - The vulnerability of the United States Embassy in Lebanon to a car-bomb attack on Thursday was partly a result of a failure to coordinate security arrangements between the State and Defense Departments, Reagan Administration officials said today.

New York State's top judges have agreed to establish guidelines aimed at insuring that conservators and guardians are appointed by the courts ''on an impartial basis without favoritism and without even an appearance of impropriety,'' the state's Chief Judge said yesterday. The Chief Judge, Lawrence H. Cooke, said in an interview that ways to set up a ''reservoir of qualified persons'' would be considered by the Administrative Board of the courts next month. Judge Cooke said he favored a proposal to limit the number of large fees a conservator or guardian could collect in any one year. The Administrative Board also agreed Thursday to draft detailed guidelines for conservators and guardians. The board's administrative staff has been told to come up with suggested guidelines for the board to consider.

They started burning Sweet's Nursery today, eight acres of young orange and grapefruit trees that state and Federal officials say have been contaminated by a virulent disease that is threatening Florida's $2.5 billion citrus industry. Inmates of a nearby minimum security state prison, wearing white overalls, uprooted the trees, piled them in low mounds and set them ablaze with diesel fuel. State officials say the job will take nearly a week. Alan Sweet, 35 years old, and his wife, Tammy, 24, did not watch. They began building the nursery four years ago, at first working on their hands and knees to plant seedlings when they could not afford help. Now, with their stock valued at $250,000, their nursery was dissolving in gray smoke that drifted into the surrounding pine and cyprus woods outside this village in central Florida.

E. Gerald Corrigan has been named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Page 39. The Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, the nation's fifth-largest bank, reduced its prime lending rate yesterday to 12 3/4 percent, from 13 percent. It was the first decline in this key lending rate since February 1983, when the rate was reduced to 10 1/2 percent, from 11 percent.

The United States Embassy, which was devastated Thursday by a car bomb, appears to have been saved from total destruction and greater loss of life by the chance presence of bodyguards assigned to the British Ambassador. Initial reconstructions of the attack indicated today that the bodyguards may have killed or at least disabled the suicide car driver before he could reach his goal. The vehicle, packed with what the police estimated was 385 pounds of explosives, raced through the defenses of the new embassy compound in the Christian suburb of Aukar and blew up in front of the building, ripping off its facade and scattering debris for hundreds of yards. It was the third nearly identical attack on American installations here in 17 months.

The tentative settlement between the United Automobile Workers and the General Motors Corporation is the first substantial effort in a major American manufacturing industry to confront the problem of job losses resulting from new technologies and the transfer of work to nonunion companies here or abroad. The agreement, reached early yesterday, recalls past efforts in the railroad, longshoremen's and printing industries to confront job losses because of advanced technologies, according to Jerome M. Rosow, president of the Work in America Institute Inc., a labor and work research organization. Job losses are a major concern to many unions, and an effort to combat them was part of another settlement, the one announced yesterday in Washington between the bituminous coal operators and the United Mine Workers of America. The agreement contained provisions designed to limit an employer's use of subcontracting and subleasing mines to nonunion operators.

When Diep Hai Ki mentions San Diego, his weathered face lights up. Mr. Diep, 64 years old, a Vietnamese refugee, has never seen San Diego - or, for that matter, any part of the United States. But that is where he and six members of his family who arrived at the large refugee center here last month are headed, to join relatives. Mostly, Mr. Diep says, ''I am very, very happy to get out of Vietnam.'' Among all the refugee camps in the region, the Morong center is known as ''the Hilton,'' boasting the top accommodations. The refugees live in long wood-framed houses with concrete floors and corrugated steel roofs. Each building has 10 units separated by walls, with 7 to 10 people living in each unit.

A Unesco spokesman today described the disclosure of a confidential American report critical of the agency's Director General as ''psychological warfare'' by those who want the United States to quit the world body at the end of this year. The spokesman for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said the disclosure of the report - a copy of which was obtained here in advance of its official release - was ''another phase of the psychological warfare by certain groups anxious to frustrate the serious efforts being made at various levels in the U.S., at Unesco and elsewhere to safeguard the organization's universal character.'' The spokesman, Dileep Padgaonkar, did not elaborate on his identification of these groups. ''Frankly, we are surprised that a confidential document concerning Unesco was made available to the press even before it was made available to Unesco,'' he added.

The Government said today that it would take ''necessary'' legal action against Kim Dae Jung, the exiled opposition leader, if he followed through on his announced plan to return home from the United States late this year. A statement from the Justice Ministry did not explain what it meant by ''necessary steps, according to the law.'' But a political adviser to President Chun Doo Hwan suggested that Mr. Kim might be forced to resume a prison sentence that was suspended two years ago so he could seek medical treatment in the United States. ''He may have been told through a third person that the Government does not countenance his return,'' said the adviser, Hong Soon Young. Mr. Kim's arrival, he said, ''may be an incident that contributes to political and social instability.''

More than 2,000 police and soldiers charged anti-Government demonstrators holding an all-night vigil outside President Ferdinand E. Marcos's presidential palace this morning. Helmeted riot police, some wielding clubs and others rifles, chased about 3,000 demonstrators through rain-slick streets as explosions from the grenades rocked the heart of Manila.