What was going on when I was born?

The United States, concerned that a Soviet freighter that has reached Nicaragua might be carrying advanced fighter aircraft, warned Moscow on Tuesday that it would not tolerate the delivery of such planes, the State Department said today. A department spokesman, John Hughes, said the warning was conveyed to Soviet officials in both Washington and Moscow. Other Administration officials said the freighter, which was shadowed by United States Navy ships and planes as it approached Nicaragua, docked at the Pacific port of Corinto this morning. The Administration officials said the Government did not know whether the ship was carrying Soviet MIG warplanes. President Reagan, speaking at a news conference in California, said, ''We cannot definitely identify that they have MIG's on there, or planes of any kind.''

An article in the Ideas and Trends section of The Week in Review on Sunday misstated the position of the A. H. Robins Company on intrauterine birth control devices. Robins, which manufactures the Dalkon Shield, is urging women still using that device to have it removed because ''continued use may pose a serious personal health hazard.'' But the company has formally taken no position about the use of any other brand of intrauterine device.

A headline on Sunday with an article about the Veterans Administration misidentified the hospital criticized in a report to the agency. It was the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Hospital in Montrose, N.Y., unrelated to Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan.

The morning after a fire destroyed the synagogue that housed his yeshiva in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, Rabbi Yaakov Mosbacher received offers from other Bensonhurst schools, synagogues and even churches for classroom space. But the rabbi turned them all down. He said he wanted to move the yeshiva, with its 45 students, out of the neighborhood altogether. The fire, which the police said was set early Halloween morning by an arsonist, destroyed more than a building. It wounded the pride of Bensonhurst, where the large Jewish and Italian groups have lived together in harmony for decades. Both Christian and Jewish leaders were quick to condemn the arson. They called it ''an isolated incident'' clearly not indicative of the generally good relations that prevail in the community. But the next day, an attempted arson occurred at a synagogue two blocks away.

Business leaders were strong supporters of President Reagan's re- election bid and have been quick to cheer his overwhelming victory. But these corporate chieftains are also voicing concern that Mr. Reagan has yet to tackle the problem he promised to solve four years ago. Yesterday, reporters of The New York Times asked business leaders: ''What is the single most important thing President Reagan should do to help your company and the economy at large?'' One answer was sounded repeatedly: lower the Federal Government's budget deficit sharply and quickly. Despite Administration contentions that large deficits do not drive up interest rates, many of the business people interviewed seemed to think that borrowing by the Government to finance its spending has kept interest rates uncomfortably high. Several of these business leaders called for cuts in Federal spending. Some said tax increases might also be necessary.

The Control Data Corporation, the troubled Minneapolis computer maker, said yesterday that it might sell the Commercial Credit Company, its financial services subsidiary. Commercial Credit, one of the top five companies in the consumer and business credit field, produced revenues of $1.1 billion last year, more than 25 percent of the parent company's total revenues. The announcement by Control Data, which posted a $54.5 million loss in the third quarter, reflects the pressure that intense competition has focused on technology companies trying to maintain unrelated businesses.

Fuji Bank said yesterday that it had lost about $48 million through unauthorized foreign exchange trading by its chief currency trader in New York. As a result, the directors of Fuji, Japan's second-largest commercial bank, after Dai-Ichi Kangyo, have agreed to forgo their annual bonuses. In addition, 14 top executives have accepted pay cuts of between 10 percent and 20 percent for six months, and Hajimu Nakazawa, the 32-year-old chief trader, was dismissed Tuesday.

It is perhaps conventional wisdom that the economic strength of New York City can be measured in the size of Manhattan's skyline, that what is good for Wall Street, Broadway and Madison Avenue is good for New York as a whole. Yet for the first time in the last six years of general economic upturn in the city, a solid increase in job growth in Manhattan - 41,500 new jobs in the 12-month period that ended last March - was matched by growth in each of the city's other four boroughs. The combined number of new jobs generated in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx in the period was 30,600, which translated into a greater percentage rate of growth than for Manhattan in every borough except the struggling Bronx, which lagged only half a percentage point behind. Making these figures even more intriguing was the nature of the job growth. Manhattan's growth continues to come in the white-collar office work that is a necessary part of a world capital economy.

President Reagan won the votes of 66 percent of whites, 62 percent of retired people and 60 percent of first-time voters, while 90 percent of blacks, 68 percent of the unemployed and 70 percent of the liberals backed Walter F. Mondale. A statistical portrait of the Presidential electorate is on page A19.

Nicaragua denied today that it was about to obtain advanced fighter aircraft from the Soviet bloc. Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto Brockman said that a Soviet freighter had arrived in the Pacific port of Corinto this morning and was unloading cargo there, but that the cargo contained nothing that would endanger the peace of nearby nations. He linked reports that the planes were in transit to the presence of an United States warship that he said had entered Nicaraguan waters off Corinto this morning. Intimidation Is Charged He said that the arrival of the American warship and recent overflights of Nicaragua by what he charged were spy planes were actions ''obviously meant to intimidate us,'' and warned that they ''could very well be the beginning of something bigger.''

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1984 The Economy Three big banks cut their prime rates a quarter point, to 11 3/4 percent. The decline was the second in less than two weeks and the fourth since Sept. 21, when the rate stood at 13 percent. Still, some analysts said the cut should have been bigger in light of what banks pay for their own funds. Bankers said the Presidential election did not affect the timing of the reduction. (Page D1.)

''I DON'T know how to find an egg in it,'' says Holly Solomon of her kitchen, newly redone in thousands of small, large, round, square, pebbled, checkered, broken, motley, plain, grained and speckled tiles. ''But for me, it's a painting I can walk into.'' Mrs. Solomon, a New York art dealer, does not cook. But it was partly because of her lack of interest in cooking that her kitchen and pantry, until recently, had escaped renovation. The rather archaic kitchen that some would have considered a liability was, instead, an asset for the New York painter Doreen Gallo, who liked the old refrigerator and stove and the old-time glass-fronted cabinets. ''The stove became like an Oldenburg for me,'' she says. Miss Gallo used the whole kitchen, including the refrigerator, as a canvas of forms beneath the tiles that now encrust virtually every inch of the walls. Completed this fall after three months of work, the rooms are in fact the newest pieces of art in the Sutton Place apartment of Mrs. Solomon and her husband, Horace - art collectors who live amid their large collection.