What was going on when I was born?

The Producer Price Index for finished goods, measuring industrial price changes that may influence what consumers pay later, fell by two-tenths of 1 percent in October, the Labor Department reported today. It was the third successive monthly decline. For the first 10 months of 1984, the index rose by a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.5 percent. That pace was more than the 1983 rise of six-tenths of 1 percent but still short of the acceleration many economists expected for the second year of the business-cycle upswing. For the 12 months through October, the index was up 1.4 percent.

President Reagan today signed a major piece of environmental legislation that tightens Federal standards for the disposal of toxic wastes and extends controls to small companies. Environmentalists said they were pleasantly surprised by the President's action on the bill, which expands the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976. They said the bill was the only major environmental legislation enacted since Mr. Reagan took office on Jan. 20, 1981. In one of many legislative actions today, the President also approved a bill that for the first time protects the manufacturers of tiny computer chips from piracy by imitators.

In their first major attack in six months, leftist guerrillas fought their way into this central Salvadoran town today, before being driven back by army paratroopers in heavy fighting. According to army troops and residents interviewed here after the fighting ended this afternoon, several hundred guerrillas attacked Government military guard posts around the town at 2 A.M. Suchitoto is about 30 miles northeast of the capital of San Salvador in the center of some of the most contested territory in the country. Paratroopers and the army's First Brigade counterattacked at 6 A.M. and succeeded in driving the rebels out by noon. The town was defended by more than 300 heavily armed troops of the national police infantry battalion, equivalent to a regular army unit.

Losing its battle against coastal erosion, New York State is putting regulations into effect that will prevent shore-front homes from being rebuilt if they are destroyed by storms. The regulations, part of New York's Coastal Erosion Management Act of 1981, grow out of state and Federal efforts to discourage development of coastal areas subjected to periodic storms and erosion. They are scheduled to take affect in 1986, once the new zones are mapped and homeowners are notified. Thousands Voice Opposition But thousands of homeowners in coastal communities have already criticized the regulations at public meetings, charging that their property is being condemned without compensation. They have vowed to go to court to challenge the regulations.

The inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency has called for the punishment of several agency officials for their roles in preparing a C.I.A. manual instructing Nicaraguan rebels in guerrilla warfare, Congressional and intelligence officials said today. The manual advises rebels to kidnap and ''neutralize'' Nicaraguan Government officials, a term interpreted by many within the United States intelligence community and by the Nicaraguan rebel leaders to mean assassinate. In a classified report on the manual submitted today to Congress, the inspector general ''recommends that five or six officials be disciplined,'' a Congressional aide familiar with the report said. The inspector general's report is to provide the basis for the disciplinary actions.

The Reagan Administration is almost certain that no advanced jet fighter planes were aboard a Soviet freighter that reached Nicaragua this week, Administration officials said today. Despite the growing evidence that no advanced combat planes were aboard the freighter, Administration officials continued today to warn of possible military action against Nicaragua if such aircraft were delivered. Officials said they would not rule out air strikes, sabotage or other military action to disable Soviet MIG fighters if they were delivered to Nicaragua. They reiterated that the Administration had no plans to invade Nicaragua.

From a distance, Silicon Valley is the envy of every community seeking to lure high-technology industry. Its myriad electronics companies, 330 in this small suburb of San Jose alone, employ more than 50,000 workers in what most people consider one of the nation's cleanest industries - no dangerous assembly lines, no belching smokestacks, no rivers turned yellow by pollutants. But the microelectronics industry - in California and elsewhere - is scrambling to counter allegations that the reputation for cleanliness is a myth. In a wave of legal actions, workers are charging they have suffered a range of health problems, some severe and some less so, from exposure to the toxic gases and chemicals that are critical to the manufacture of the semiconductors, or microchips, that drive modern computers. ''People think that just because semiconductor workers wear white suits in dust-free rooms, the industry is clean,'' said Dr. Joseph LaDou, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.

At least 117 people have died of starvation in a remote district of West Irian province, the daily newspaper Sinar Harapan said today.

In this West African nation, as elsewhere, there are people who know how to make an art of living. But this ramshackle roadside town 10 miles northeast of the Ghanaian capital of Accra is home to a very different group of craftsmen: custom coffin makers. ''Oh, they come to us from all over the country and from other countries, too,'' said Samuel Adjei Quaye, the proprietor of the Kane Quaye Workshop. ''Everybody knows of the fine work we do here.''

The Soviet Union has sought clarification of President Reagan's proposal for wide-ranging ''umbrella'' talks on arms control, the State Department said today. The Soviet inquiries have produced some hope within the Administration that Secretary of State George P. Shultz and the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei A. Gromyko, might hold more detailed discussions on nuclear issues early next year. Administration officials said, however, that the Soviet Union had so far limited itself to asking questions, without making any commitment to resuming the suspended talks on medium- range missiles or strategic arms. Public Criticism by Soviet In public, the Soviet Union has criticized the proposals by the United States, arguing that the United States is trying to avoid making substantive concessions by coming up with procedural suggestions like the ''umbrella talks'' and the creation of a special arms-control ''czar'' who would deal directly with the President.

In a solemn ceremony today, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi placed an urn containing his slain mother's ashes under a tree on the Nehru family estate in northern India. He was surrounded by extraordinary security. The rite performed by the 40-year-old Prime Minister was the same one he carried out 20 years ago in honor of his grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India's first Prime Minister.

Somber and horrified after a visit to drought- stricken Ethiopia, M. Peter McPherson, administrator of the Agency for International Development, said today that he had ''never seen anything like'' the famine that is devastating northern Ethiopia. ''I've seen a lot of places around the world,'' Mr. McPherson said, first as a Peace Corps volunteer 20 years ago in a Peruvian slum built on top of a garbage dump and more recently as foreign aid administrator. ''But I've never seen anything like this, just never seen anything like this.'' ''A lot of places in the world you see kids with big bellies,'' he added, which indicates, he said, a lack of protein in the diet.