What was going on when I was born?

Republican and Democratic legislators said today that Congress would not approve $14 million in aid for the Nicaraguan rebels, despite a stepped-up drive for it by President Reagan. The chairman and the deputy chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence urged Mr. Reagan to drop his campaign for additional aid to be sent to the insurgents through the Central Intelligence Agency and to formulate a new policy in conjunction with Congress. They said that although they wanted changes in the leftist Government in Nicaragua, that did not mean that they or the President could support the overthrow of that Government. ''That's wrong because he cannot do that,'' said Senator David F. Durenberger, Republican of Minnesota, the intelligence committee chairman.

In an outburst of partisan rancor, negotiations to seal a compromise on farm credit legislation collapsed in the Senate early this morning, and the filibuster blocking a vote on the confirmation of Edwin Meese 3d as Attorney General is to continue. Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the majority leader, threatened all-night sessions in the Senate next week in order to face down the Democrats who have blocked the compromise and to force a vote on the Meese nomination. He ordered the Senate to reconvene this morning. Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the Democrats' leader, said the Republicans were putting the confirmation of Mr. Meese over the welfare of the nation's farmers. He said the Republicans' message was, ''Let the farmers go to hell.''

The Soviet public was officially advised that Konstantin U. Chernenko had stayed away from an important speaking engagement today ''on the recommendation of his doctors.'' Although Soviet officials have told foreigners on several occasions, both in Moscow and abroad, that Mr. Chernenko was ailing, the fact had not been acknowledged, implicitly or otherwise, by the Soviet press. Western diplomats said they could not remember when a Soviet leader's absence had ever been explained by the recommendation of doctors. The announcement was made by Soviet television and the official press agency Tass after the Soviet leader failed to deliver a scheduled address to his constituents from his Moscow electoral district.

Besieged by reports of inconsistencies in his credentials, John C. Michaelson, Governor Cuomo's choice to oversee economic development in New York State, withdrew yesterday. In a letter to Mr. Cuomo, Mr. Michaelson, a former investment banker, offered his resignation as Director of Economic Development ''with the most profound regret'' and asked the Governor to withdraw his nomination as Commissioner of Commerce. ''This decision is the most difficult one of my life,'' Mr. Michaelson wrote in his two-page letter. ''I leave with great regret, particularly because I was so anxious to make a contribution to the public good of our state, to the continuing progress your Administration has achieved and to the exciting future it is forging.''

A seven-story-high ginkgo tree on an elegant block of Upper East Side town houses is fast becoming a cause cel ebre. So far, the cause has involved the Parks Department, the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the City Planning Commission, the local community board, several lawyers, at least one architect, a horticulturist, various city officials, impassioned neighbors and one brownstone owner who wants to remove the tree in order to build a garage in his house. The owner, Matt Sabatine, bought the brownstone at 110 East 64th Street intending to turn it into a residence and office. When he learned that the zoning had been changed and that offices were not permitted, Mr. Sabatine decided instead to use the ground floor for a garage.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that if more aid was denied to the rebels in Nicaragua now, that country would fall into ''the endless darkness of Communist tyranny.'' If this happened, direct and costly American action might be required later, he said. Mr. Shultz, speaking to the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco, said Americans had a moral duty to help ''the freedom fighters'' battling the Government of Nicaragua. His suggestion that failure to help them might eventually force the United States into action there was the first such public statement by a senior Administration official.

South Africa's only nuclear power station, which employs some American personnel, has been closed indefinitely because of flaws in water-carrying stainless steel pipes, the state-run company that operates it said today. Environmentalist groups opposed to the Koeberg plant, 20 miles north of Cape Town, expressed concern about the shutdown, but the South African Electricity Supply Commission said the problem was not serious. ''We could probably have run for years with these faults and nothing would happen,'' a spokesman for the commission said.

A minor official named Liu Baoqin had an eager audience when he told villagers outside Peking last summer that he could get 200,000 Japanese television sets through contacts in Hong Kong. With a new form of prosperity sweeping rural China, imported television sets have taken the place of bicycles and sewing machines among the most prized of household possessions. So officials in Yutian County were all ears when Mr. Liu sketched a deal under which the sets could be imported and resold for a profit of 30 million yuan, about $10.7 million. As it turned out the whole thing was a fraud. After Mr. Liu had taken 12.6 million yuan in advance payments for the nonexistent sets, and placed two million yuan in his own bank account, he was arrested in a luxury hotel across the border from Hong Kong. With his fellow swindlers, he is awaiting trial on charges that carry a maximum sentence of death.

By tradition, this white-minority nation has been Africa's great breadbasket, a supplier of food to its black-governed neighbors. But these days, after three years of drought, things look slightly different. The farmers in South Africa say some crops have not been good, so they may not grow enough to feed the millions of black people who depend on corn as a staple. But to the north, in Zimbabwe, the corn crop will be abundant, and some farmers there are suggesting that, this year, they may reverse the tradition so that a black-ruled country will sell a surplus to the white- ruled giant whose politics it abhors, but whose hard currency it desperately needs.

A top State Department official warned New Zealand today that its refusal to permit a port call by United States ships carrying nuclear weapons amounted to abandonment of its operational role in the Anzus alliance. In a speech prepared for delivery to the National Defense University in Honolulu, Assistant Secretary of State Paul D. Wolfowitz said the result of New Zealand's decision would be to weaken an important link in the treaty and thus increase rather than decrease the threat of nuclear war.

President Reagan pledged to President Miguel de la Madrid of Mexico today that traffic crossing the United States-Mexican border would be returned to normal ''in the briefest possible period,'' Mr. de la Madrid's office announced tonight. In addition, the Attorneys General of the two countries will meet soon ''with the end of extending the cooperation between both countries in the campaign against the traffic of drugs,'' Mr. de la Madrid's office said. The agreements were reached during a telephone conversation between the two Presidents today. Mr. de la Madrid's office said the leaders had spoken for ''several minutes'' and that their talks were of the ''greatest cordiality and friendship.'' Mexican officials have been highly critical of a decision by the United States to increase inspections at the border, a move that has delayed traffic for hours, in some cases, and cut into business on both sides of the border.

The armed forces Chief of Staff and 25 other men went on trial today in the 1983 assassination of the opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. The defendants are also charged in the killing of Rolando Galman, the man the military accused of shooting Mr. Aquino. Prosecutors offered little today to support accusations of a broad military conspiracy, relying almost entirely on testimony given in a 10-month independent inquiry into the killing. The board concluded that Mr. Aquino was killed by one of two military escorts on a stairway leading from the airliner.