What was going on when I was born?

An unmanned jetliner powered by a fuel mixture designed to avoid a lethal fireball in case of an accident was slammed to the desert floor in a Government-sponsored test crash today, sending a mass of red flame hundreds of feet into the air. The failure of the fuel mix, safety experts said, was a disappointing outcome to the ambitious nine-minute, $11.8 million test, which was part of a long-term effort to find ways of reducing casualties in survivable accidents. But, the experts added, the failure was offset by large amounts of data gained on crash forces, new seats and other interior furnishings that they said could lead to safer cabin structures. The plane, a Boeing 720 carrying 75 dummies strapped in passenger and crew seats, was guided to the designated crash site here by remote control from six miles away.

The state's Commission on Judicial Nomination yesterday gave Governor Cuomo a list of seven candidates for chief judge of New York. The panel also forwarded to him the names of 11 candidates to fill a second imminent vacancy on the Court of Appeals, the state's highest tribunal. The two positions will become vacant Dec. 31, when Chief Judge Lawrence H. Cooke and Associate Judge Hugh R. Jones must step down. Earlier this year, both turned 70, the mandatory retirement age.

Once upon a time, when its fans were young and gay, baseball was considered a sport. In this enlightened and expensive age, in which innocence has given way to reality, baseball is called a business. The people who operate it wonder if it will live happily ever after. Tom Monaghan will live happily ever after. The Detroit Tigers won the World Series one year and four days after he bought them. With Monaghan, baseball remains a sport, a game, far removed from the not-so- good business many of his fellow owners consider it to be ''Business has nothing to do with it,'' Monaghan said of his purchase of the Tigers, on the first anniversary of his acquisition. ''It was something I wanted to do all my life. I don't care what the return is. If I had to sell more pizzas to pay for it, I would.''

A rain-soaked desperation pass - traveling 64 yards in the twilight in the Orange Bowl, with no time remaining on the clock - elevated Doug Flutie from a college football hero to a national celebrity. ''The Pass'' that enabled Boston College to defeat Miami the day after Thanksgiving was the essence of this daring undersized quarterback. It was a play worth more than any words to describe the qualities that have enabled Flutie to win the Heisman Trophy, which was awarded last night by the Downtown Athletic Club. There was little suspense when Flutie was announced as the golden anniversary Heisman winner at 7:55 P.M. at the conclusion of an hour-long program televised nationally by NBC. Minutes later, Flutie received a congratulatory telephone call from President Reagan, whom the quarterback supported for re-election.

Shortly before the Nov. 6 election, American intelligence detected what officials describe as hard evidence that Shiite Moslem terrorists planned to attack yet another American installation in Lebanon. The target this time, officials said, was the American Ambassador's hillside residence in Yarze, a Beirut suburb overlooking the Mediterranean. ''We knew who was planning the attack and generally where in West Beirut they were located,'' said Robert B. Oakley, the director of the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism and Emergency Planning. Little was written about it at the time, but American officials point to the swift response to the threat as an example of what has to be done if the United States is to counter the continuing threat of international terrorism. Armed with advance intelligence, American and Lebanese forces mobilized. Half the American staff was evacuated, the Ambassador was secretly flown out of the country, the perimeter defense at the residence was reinforced and pushed outward, antiaircraft weapons were put on the grounds and the air lanes above the residence were closed to all traffic.

''I have liked this ballet from the Sharon Basco is dance critic for The Boston Herald and Boston Magazine. first time I danced in it as a boy,'' George Balanchine wrote in his ''Complete Stories of the Great Ballets.'' When he set it on the New York City Ballet in 1954 ''The Nutcracker'' was still a ballet ''with which American audiences were not sufficiently familiar.'' Balanchine remedied that. In 30 years we have become intimate, if not saturated, with ''The Nutcracker.'' The ballet has become the financial backbone of most ballet troupes in America, dominating autumn with rehearsals for professionals and students alike, and staking out the month of December for its sugar-coated divertissements, theatrical snowstorms, and other stagecraft magic Balanchine once found lacking in the American experience. ''There isn't a company in the country unaware that 'Nutcracker' equals guaranteed earned income,'' the Pennsylvania Ballet's artistic director Robert Weiss commented. ''If you are in your right mind, you do it.'' The economic importance of the work to the New York City Ballet itself may be gauged by the fact that the company devotes a month of performances to it every year.

LAST week the Administration started laying out plans for a radical change in the American fiscal system, and for completing the Reagan Revolution by further cuts in social spending. It is not yet clear whether the President himself fully supports all the proposals his advisers are throwing to him, or whether Congress will give him what he wants if he fights for his advisers' recommendations. But what is clear is that the nation's disordered budget position, with the deficit running at $210 billion, at least, in 1985, will require heroic measures if the nation's weakened economy is to be reinvigorated. There is an uneasy sense in Washington, in Wall Street and in financial markets everywhere that the budgetary and fiscal chickens are coming home to roost, and if strong action is not taken, the national and world economy will lapse into recession. To deal with that threatening prospect, the President's top economic advisers last week offered a two-track plan.

A new Government program to cut Medicare expenses allows federally financed agencies in each state to dictate in advance whether surgical procedures proposed by doctors are really necessary. If the agencies deem the operations unnecessary, they can refuse Federal money for them. The program would not affect emergency procedures. Some doctors say they have serious concerns about the program, which took effect in most states last month. They contend it could lead to rationing of health care. But, as justification, Federal officials cite a large body of studies that show tremendous variations in medical care from one region to another.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. ON a pro football team whose coach tries to keep the players from getting too excited about success or too downcast over failure, Phil Simms is an enigma. The Giants' quarterback talks a good even-keel game. When things go badly, he says he is not upset because he knows they eventually will go well. When they do go well, he says he is not overly elated, because he had expected them to go well. The private Phil Simms is more emotional. Last year, when a compound dislocated fracture of his right (passing) thumb wiped out his season as he was about to reclaim the starting job, he spent the next two weeks like an enraged tiger about to burst from his cage. He was angry because another season had gone down the drain to injury.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which saved the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company from bankruptcy this summer, is requiring 10 of its 16 directors to resign. John E. Swearingen, the new chairman of the bank's holding company, will announce the move Monday, banking officials said. Among the directors being asked to step down are chairmen of some leading American corporations. Federal banking officials said privately today that they had taken the unusual step of asking for the resignation of the board members to help signal other boards that they should oversee their banks' officers more closely to help reduce the risks of bad loans and bank failures.

MORE than a month after the new Medicare rules went into effect, the controversy and confusion that surrounded their enactment persist. Although physicians more than patients are likely to feel the initial impact, it remains unclear how both parties will fare in the long run. The new regulations were two-pronged, setting a 15- month freeze on physicians' fees and establishing two classes of physicians - participating and nonparticipating. The two-class system rather than the fees is the basis of dissension among medical ranks.

Science fiction has always had a prophetic side. In his 1914 story ''The World Set Free,'' H. G. Wells described a war in which the major cities of the world are destroyed by atom bombs the size of cannon balls. In the mid-1930's, after reading it, Leo Szilard became convinced that real atom bombs could be built and filed a secret patent on the idea. He later became a driving force behind the Manhattan Project. So, too, authors of science fiction have predicted the advent of moon rockets, radio, helicopters, tanks, robots, computers, submarines, and communications satellites that remain stationary 22,300 miles above the earth. Now comes ''2010: Odyssey Two,'' the sequel to the epic ''2001: A Space Odyssey.'' The author of the novels on which both films are based, Arthur C. Clarke, said in an interview that ''2010,'' which opens Friday at several New York theaters, is a thinly veiled plea for peace and cooperation in space. In the movie, Russians and Americans put aside their political differences to blast off in search of the ship and crew that nine years earlier, in 2001, had been lost while investigating an enigmatic black monolith near the planet Jupiter. That earlier voyage started after American explorers on the moon uncovered a monolith that beamed a powerful message toward the distant planet. The American ship sent to investigate had a small crew and a powerful, ultimately malevolent computer known as the H.A.L. 9000.