What was going on when I was born?

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1984 The Economy The Christmas shopping season opens on an uncertain note, with indications of a sharper economic slowdown. But most retailers remain optimistic that sales will exceed the strong performance turned in last year. (Page D1.)

Europe's two manufacturers of enriched uranium reactor fuel are opening an aggressive sales drive in the United States, where a change in Department of Energy regulations has allowed American utilities to order fuel from abroad for the first time. The two companies, Eurodif and Urenco, are already obtaining lucrative American supply contracts - at the expense of the Energy Department, which until now enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the United States. In the last few weeks, three New England utility companies - Yankee Vermont, Yankee Maine and Yankee Rowe - agreed to buy fuel over the next 10 years from Eurodif, a consortium owned by France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Iran. Negotiations for similar contracts are under way with the Florida Power and Light Company and Northeast Utilities, among others, according to French officials.

Under this heading, The Times amplifies articles or rectifies what the editors consider significant lapses of fairness, balance or perspective. A dispatch from Los Angeles on Oct. 20 described the case of Nikolay and Svetlana Ogorodnikov, immigrants from the Soviet Union who have been indicted for espionage.

An article yesterday, and in some editions Wednesday, on the history of Rossini's ''William Tell'' incorrectly stated the language of the opera's first performance at the Metropolitan Opera. Presented on Nov. 28, 1884, it was in German.

The United States and the Soviet Union announced today that Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko would meet in Geneva Jan. 7 and 8 to negotiate an agenda for talks on limiting nuclear arms. The White House said the agenda would be for future talks on ''the whole range of questions concerning nuclear and outer space arms.'' Robert C. McFarlane, President Reagan's national security adviser, said at a news conference that the preliminary talks between Mr. Gromyko and Mr. Shultz had been agreed to without conditions. 'Ready to Discuss All Issues' ''We are open and ready to discuss all issues,'' Mr. McFarlane said. ''We're at a moment where each side has decided to make a determined effort to reduce tensions.''

Every major accounting firm sporadically gets hit with multimillion-dollar lawsuits arising from audits they conducted on companies that later wound up in financial trouble. Shareholders and creditors of the company, hoping to recoup their losses, often hone in on the auditors, who tend to be the deepest pockets left in the financial rubble. Sometimes the suits seem to come in waves, as they did in the 1970's for Peat Marwick, at the time the largest of the Big Eight accounting firms. These days, Arthur Andersen & Company, which is now the nation's largest accounting firm, has been thrust into the uncomfortable spotlight, embroiled in a rash of multimillion-dollar lawsuits seemingly at once. ''As long as it's sporadic, it's part of life, but I think Arthur Andersen has crossed that threshold,'' said Richard L. Kaplan, a former Arthur Andersen accountant and now a University of Illinois law professor and member of the Illinois Committee on Accountancy, a state regulatory body.

As thousands of workers prepare to begin harvesting the coffee beans on which Nicaragua's economy depends, insurgents have stepped up their raids in the fertile northern hills where most of the coffee is grown. Among those who have died over the last week have been peasant women and children, local Sandinista leaders, two bank administrators and a correspondent for the official Sandinista newspaper Barricada. President-elect Daniel Ortega Saavedra was among the mourners at a mass funeral held north of here on Saturday. Nicaragua's economy is in dire straits, and the Government badly needs the dollars to be earned from coffee exports. Rebel leaders have said they seek to weaken the Government by disrupting the economy.

The International Business Machines Corporation, which used to dominate the market for office typewriters with its ubiquitous Selectric line, has found itself losing ground since the arrival of electronic models. Electronic typewriters come equipped with circuit boards, which contain a host of semiconductor chips, eliminating much of the machinery that drives manual and electric typewriters and providing advanced features such as memory capacity. Because electronic devices have fewer moving parts, they are generally considered more reliable than their electric counterparts. After electronic typewriters were introduced in 1978, sales of electric models began to decline rapidly. At the peak of their popularity six years ago, 10 million electric machines were chattering away in American offices, according to Dataquest Inc., a San Jose, Calif., research concern. By the end of this year, the number of electric typewriters is expected to be down to seven million, with I.B.M. accounting for 70 percent of that.

There may have been hundreds of strangers in the cavernous gymnasium where the Salvation Army served Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, but the dinner at Table No. 10 held all the warmth that home can offer. There sat the six friends - homeless, but not alone - who call themselves the Port Authority Crew, after the bus terminal where they met four years ago and which they have called their home, intermittently, ever since. ''We have our own hotel,'' said one of the crew's two women, Angel Cruz. ''It's called the E train.''

In the second such incident in as many days, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a young Palestinian demonstrator today in the occupied West Bank. Israeli authorities asserted that the soldiers opened fire after the youth and other demonstrators had ignored warnings to stop throwing stones at Israeli vehicles in the town of Ramallah. On Wednesday, one student was killed and six others were wounded when Israeli troops opened fire to disperse a large crowd of Bir Zeit University students who were pelting Israeli soldiers with rocks and shouting slogans in support of the Palestine Liberation Organization chairman, Yasir Arafat. Agitation Increases With the Palestine National Council meeting beginning in Amman today, the West Bank has started to boil over with political agitation - partly from Palestinians who want to demonstrate solidarity with their compatriots in Amman and partly because of infighting between pro- and anti-Arafat factions.

A picture caption in some editions of Weekend yesterday incorrectly identified the position held by Grover A. Whalen in 1939. He was president of the World's Fair.

Britain announced today that it would withdraw from Unesco at the end of next year unless there was clear evidence of further progress toward changing the agency. The United States gave a similar notice last year, and it is widely expected that the Reagan Administration will go through with its plans to withdraw next month. Administration officials have said they were displeased with Unesco because of what they called uncontrolled budget increases, inefficient administration and a tendency by the organization to engage in extraneous political attacks on Western values. Pressure From the U.S.American diplomats had pressed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Government to strengthen Washington's stance by making the announcement that it made this afternoon. Last week Western diplomats said Britain had begun telling its allies it was prepared to follow the Administration's example.