What was going on when I was born?

Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said today that he would suspend for 30 days a small part of the Pentagon's payments to the General Dynamics Corporation while the Defense Department looks into possibly improper billings by the nation's largest military contractor. In a speech at an American Legion convention here, Mr. Weinberger also announced a review of billing procedures and a tightening of claims for overhead expenses of all major military contractors. The General Dynamics suspension involves payments for general and administrative costs, or overhead. This is 8 percent of the company's Government billings, according to a statement issued by General Dynamics. A Pentagon spokesman, Michael I. Burch, told reporters the 30-day suspension represents about $40 million.

The South Korean Government announced today that 14 banned politicians would be removed from a blacklist. They include the two most prominent opposition figures, Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam. The decision erased the last vestiges of a ban imposed in November 1980 after Gen. Chun Doo Hwan seized power in a military coup. The blacklist initially contained 811 names. But since Mr. Chun became President in early 1981 it has been whittled down, and by last Nov. 30 all but the 14 had regained their rights. A Government statement said the ban had been dropped because ''a new political climate is now prevailing amid stability born of a harmonizing blend of freedom and order.'' But it warned against ''a regression into the old era,'' referring to the pre-Chun days as a period when politics was ''characterized by corruption, demagoguery, violence and intrigue.''

A photograph of bacteria in Science Times yesterday with an article about gonorrhea vaccines was incorrectly attributed. It was provided by the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

After a rocky entry into the computer business last year, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company is looking to a new organization, a new leader and - later this month - a distinctive new personal computer as it struggles to compete with the International Business Machines Corporation. A.T.&T. has long been regarded as a major contender in the computer market, because of its unparalleled telecommunications experience, its innovative Bell Laboratories and its hefty wallet. But A.T.&T. executives interviewed last week conceded that in its first year, the drive to challenge I.B.M. on its own turf largely failed. Only now, they say, is the company overcoming the internal chaos caused by A.T.&T.'s split-up and misdirected marketing strategies. ''I can't say that our execution last year met the expectations of outsiders, or even ourselves,'' said James D. Edwards, the energetic former I.B.M. strategist who was installed as president of the computer systems group last October as part of a broader effort to bring order to A.T.&T.'s twice-reorganized Informations Systems group. ''But I think that our product plans are finally coming together.''

Two top employees of the New York City Medical Examiner's Office were removed from their jobs yesterday and transferred out of the agency, according to the Health Department. The employees - Patricia H. Woods, the office's administrative manager, and William Kelly, its inspector general - were replaced by three workers from the department, which oversees the office. Miss Woods was described by staff members as ''dictatorial,'' according to a city report released earlier this week.

Ignoring threats of a Presidential veto, the House of Representatives today passed an emergency measure on farm credit that could provide some immediate cash to financially distressed farmers preparing to plant their spring crops. By a 255-to-168 vote, the House accepted a bill passed last week by the Senate that provides advances on loans to grain and cotton farmers who would normally not receive the money until harvest time, as well as $100 million to help rural banks lower interest rates on troubled farm loans. In the voting, 225 Democrats and 30 Republicans supported the measure and 150 Republicans and 18 Democrats opposed it. About half the Republicans in favor were from Farm Belt states. Most of the Democrats voting no were from urban districts.

The Soviet Union is approximately equal to the United States in basic research on directed energy, like lasers and subatomic-particle beams, that would be required for a broad land- and space- based missile defense system, according to Pentagon reports. But the Russians are said to trail badly in the technology that would be needed to turn such energy beams into workable weapons. High Reagan Administration officials publicly express a belief that a United States drive to design a space- based missile system, as a defense against nuclear attack, will eventually force the Soviet Union to give up its reliance on offensive land- based intercontinental ballistic missiles and build a similar defense system of its own. These officials say the result of the American effort, made through its Strategic Defense Initiative, more commonly called Star Wars, would be a more stable nuclear standoff. In the view of several other experts on Soviet policy and weapons technology, however, the Soviet Union may instead multiply its offensive missile force in the hope that it can saturate and overwhelm the proposed United States defensive shield. The Russians will also probably explore technologically simple and inexpensive methods of overcoming a ''Star Wars'' defense, the analysts say.

''It seems the Democrats are more interested in harvesting votes than in harvesting crops.''

The Economy The Senate Budget Committee voted to cut $79 billion from President Reagan's proposed military spending over three years. The proposal could open the way for a bipartisan deficit reduction package in the Senate. (Page A1.) The House passed an emergency farm credit measure that could provide immediate cash to distressed farmers, but a veto is threatened. (A1.) The financial condition of agricultural banks has seriously deteriorated and will get worse, according to the Comptroller of the Currency. (B11.)

The closing of E.S.M. Government Securities Inc., a little-known securities dealer in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., began to ripple throughout the financial system yesterday. Local governments as well as financial institutions that had lent it more than $1 billion could face losses and financial hardship, according to E.S.M.'s court-appointed receiver and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Beaumont, Tex., was put on a credit watch list by the Standard & Poor's Corporation because of that city's loan of $20 million to E.S.M. Other municipal lenders to E.S.M. as of Dec. 31, 1984, included Tempe, Ariz. ($8.5 million), Pompano Beach, Fla. ($8.3 million) and Burnsville, Minn. ($5.5 million).

The largest brass producer in Connecticut closed today, marking the end of an era for this Yankee mill town hailed during the Industrial Revolution as America's ''Brass City.'' About 600 people were laid off today when the Metals Division of Century Brass Products Inc., which cast brass from molten zinc and copper and pressed it into rods, sheets and tubes, closed its doors. The company president, Lewis Segal, predicted that the rest of the company, the General Products Division, which makes items ranging from brass ice-cream scoops to hand-grenade casings, would fold within a few weeks or months, putting an additional 1,100 people out of work. Last week, Mr. Segal asked Century Brass workers for $4.8 million in wage and benefit concessions to keep the troubled company open.

The Chief Minister of the Turks and Caicos Islands was arrested today by Federal undercover agents and charged with plotting to use the island chain south of the Bahamas as a base to smuggle narcotics into the United States. Agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration said the Chief Minister, Norman Saunders, 41 years old, and three others, including two high-ranking officials of the Turks and Caicos Government, were arrested at a Miami hotel after accepting cash payments from undercover agents. American officials said the payment was part of $50,000 accepted by Mr. Saunders over several weeks to protect a cocaine and marijuana transhipment base the agents said they wanted to establish on the Turks and Caicos archipelago in the British West Indies. Bail Set at $2 Million Mr. Saunders, the highest elected official in the Turks and Caicos, was held under $2 million bail set this evening by a Federal magistrate. The Turks and Caicos island chain is a British protectorate in the Atlantic Ocean about 600 miles southeast of Miami; the southernmost island in the chain is about 140 miles north of Haiti.