What was going on when I was born?

The Federal Reserve Board, in another move to ease credit, today cut the rate it charges on loans to financial institutions by half a point, to 8 percent. The reduction brought the so-called discount rate, which is closely watched as the most visible reflection of central bank policy, to its lowest level in more than six years. It peaked at 14 percent in September 1981 and has not been as low as 8 percent since October 1978. Short-Term Rates Cited The vote was 5 to 1, the dissent coming from Lyle E. Gramley, the central bank governor who has appeared most optimistic that the economy already has enough momentum to rebound smartly early next year from its current lackluster growth. The seventh governor, Martha R. Seger, was not present.

Battling a persistent coal fire a mile into a mountain, rescue workers today found the bodies of 13 miners, victims of the smoke and flames that trapped them Wednesday night. Fourteen other miners were still missing. Nine of the bodies were found at dawn today, huddled near the spot where the fire had blocked their escape. Rescuers found four more bodies tonight as they slowly made their way down the tunnel toward the area where mine officials earlier hoped the trapped miners had sought refuge. The discovery of the bodies shattered earlier optimism that a round-the- clock rescue effort and the drilling of two emergency air shafts into the Wilberg Mine might succeed in bringing all the miners out alive.

The State Department said today that the United States would not meet Israel's request for an emergency grant of $800 million until Israel adopted a much tougher economic austerity program. After two days of talks with an Israeli delegation, the department promised to recommend to Congress ''continued substantial levels of economic and military aid'' for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, 1985. Other officials said this would be at about the same levels that Israel was now receiving. For the 1985 fiscal year ending next Sept. 30, Israel has received a total of $2.6 billion in direct grant aid, of which $1.2 billion is economic assistance and $1.4 billion military aid.

The Administration's proposed budget for next year would deny guaranteed student loans and certain education grants to any family with an income of more than $30,000 a year, Administration officials said today. Under current law, eligibility for the programs is based on what the family can afford, and there is no absolute limit on income. Many families earning more than $30,000 have qualified by showing financial need. The officials said the main purpose of the proposed limit was to focus student aid programs more on low-income families.

United States Government officials said today that Grigory V. Romanov, the former Leningrad party leader, is the leading candidate to replace Marshal Dmitri F. Ustinov as Defense Minister of the Soviet Union. The officials said it was significant because if the Kremlin followed its usual practice, this would have the effect of removing Mr. Romanov from active consideration as the successor to Konstantin U. Chernenko, the Soviet leader, and leave Mikhail S. Gorbachev as the seemingly undisputed heir apparent. Youth and Good Health This is because Mr. Romanov would be expected to give up his post as a national Communist Party secretary, leaving only Mr. Chernenko and Mr. Gorbachev with those positions. No Soviet leader has taken power without also having been a party secretary.

Marshal Dmitri F. Ustinov, a designer of the Soviet Union's modern military machine and Defense Minister since 1976, died Thursday after a two-month illness, the official Soviet press agency Tass announced today. The death of the 76-year-old marshal left vacant one of the most powerful posts in the Soviet hierarchy and deprived the Politburo of a senior member whose power ranged far beyond the Defense Ministry. No successor was immediately named, and the chief question was whether the Kremlin would return the Defense Ministry to a professional military man or name a civilian like Marshal Ustinov. Gorbachev Announces Death Early speculation about a successor centered on Grigory V. Romanov, the former Leningrad party chief and the Politburo member named to head Marshal Ustinov's funeral commission. In the past, the official named chairman of the funeral commission for a Politburo funeral has often later been named the dead man's successor. Marshal Ustinov was head of the funeral commission for his predecessor, Marshal Andrei A. Grechko.

The Swedish Defense Ministry reported today that China had detonated a relatively weak nuclear device underground on Thursday. The ministry's observatory at Hagfors said the device was detonated at the Lop Nor testing ground in Xinjiang. China carried out a similar test last October.

When she came to the United Nations in 1981, says Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, who has announced that she intends to resign as chief American delegate at the end of the year, ''the radical nations within the third world had achieved a dominant voice in the debates and decisions.'' In the face of constant attacks, there was ''silence and retreat by the West,'' she recalls, adding, ''The general understanding was that the third world was letting off steam and that it was 'bad taste' to notice it.'' As activities at the United Nations wound down this week, Dr. Kirkpatrick took an hour to reflect on her efforts during her four years as chief American delegate to ''restore the United States to a position of influence within the United Nations.'' In an interview at her office at the United States Mission, she took credit for reducing the level of polemics by third world countries against the United States and Israel. ''Israel has not been expelled, and the obsessive anti-Israeli attacks have significantly diminished,'' she said. ''Most countries no longer attack the United States at all in debates.''

An American diplomat said Thursday that six people had been arrested for plotting to attack the United States Embassy in Tel Aviv. News reports in the United States this week said Israeli security forces foiled a planned attack on the embassy and Israeli Government buildings in Tel Aviv three weeks ago when they arrested six Palestinians from the occupied Gaza Strip who were carrying grenades.

Foreign Ministry officials said today that the Government had told Unesco that West Germany might withdraw from the United Nations agency if changes were not made. They said Foreign Minister Hans- Dietrich Genscher, in a letter sent this week to Unesco's general secretary, Amadou Mahtar M'Bow, said West Germany would remain a member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for at least another year. But it said the Government would review its membership in 12 months and might withdraw if the agency did not become less ideological and more efficient, the officials said.

The editor of the opposition daily newspaper, La Prensa, said today that he had gone into exile and would make his home in neighboring Costa Rica until press censorship was lifted in Nicaragua. ''If the censorship ends, I'll go back,'' the editor, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Barrios, said in a telephone interview from the Costa Rican capital, San Jose. ''That could be one day, two days or 20 years.'' ''I was no longer fulfilled fighting with censors,'' Mr. Chamorro Barrios said. ''My passion wore out. I didn't want to stay there and work just to fill up files at the censorship office.''

The Communist Party newspaper People's Daily today published its second front-page editorial in two weeks challenging the universal validity of Marxist dogma. To drive the point home, the newspaper dug into the speeches and writings of leading Communist theoreticians from Marx to Stalin to Mao Zedong himself to show that they had no patience with ''phrase-mongers,'' reliance on ''empty talk'' or those who ''do nothing else except copy'' from earlier thinkers, as the editorial put it. The article was published amid what appeared to be an internal Communist Party dispute over a similar piece that was published in the editions of Dec. 7, attracting a wave of comment at home and abroad. The earlier article was judged by many Western experts to be the furthest that any ruling Communist Party has gone toward publicly acknowledging the limitations of the Communist classics.