What was going on when I was born?

Under this heading, The Times amplifies articles or rectifies what the editors consider significant lapses of fairness, balance or perspective. An article in Business Day yesterday about a list of problem banks maintained by the Comptroller of the Currency reported that 33 banks on the list were considered in danger of failure.

There are talking robots, walking robots, robots that draw pictures, robots that play Bach on the organ, and singing stuffed animal robots. There are computer-designed 3-D movies featuring songs with refrains like ''Machines and humans can be friends.'' There are even what have been dubbed ''ladies of the future'' - phalanxes of hostesses dressed in high- tech metallic shades of silver and gold. Here, in this land of shrines, the newest shrine is a paean to science and technology. Tsukuba Expo '85, which opens later this month 32 miles outside Tokyo, offers pavilion after pavilion extolling the wonders of the next century. But while its sponsors have billed it as a show displaying developments in science and technology never seen before, it appears to be a vision with a large dose of Disneyland, at times a shrine more to showmanship than to science.

He is one of the most disliked, if envied, men in the oil patch. To this day, municipal officials in Texas complain that he promised them 20 years of cheap energy, then reneged. Competitors marvel at how, penniless and relatively inexperienced, he could start a gas-pipeline company from scratch, win some big cities as customers, and build a $6 billion- a-year energy comglomerate. On one point, though, nearly all agree: Oscar S. Wyatt Jr., the 60- year-old chairman and chief executive of the Houston-based Coastal Corporation, is one of the most persistent and driven men in the energy business. ''He's been successful because he works about 18 hours a day,'' said Ervin O. Buck, a Coastal director.

The American Dental Association's Council on Dental Therapeutics will probably grant its seal of approval in the ''near future'' to several proposed agents for toothpastes or mouthwashes that fight plaque and gum disease, an official said today. Several Wall Street analysts and dental experts said the new products would be the largest scientific breakthrough in the toothpaste industry in decades, with substantial profits at stake in the high margin business. Hercules Segalas, a senior vice president with Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., said the anticipated action would greatly help the Procter & Gamble Company, which he said was poised to bring to market a prescription mouthwash that would fight gum disease and a toothpaste that would fight accumulations of tartar. ''The potential to oral health of some of these chemical agents would be very significant,'' said Edgar W. Mitchell, secretary of the A.D.A.'s Council on Dental Therapeutics. ''The dental profession is almost eager to have some of these products on the marketplace.''

The collapse of E.S.M. Government Securities Inc.,, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., firm with losses estimated at more than $250 million, is a reminder to local government officials and other investors that their supposedly safe investments in United States Treasury securities can be jeopardized by problems at the securities firm they do business with. Large dealers in government securities and major investors have learned how to protect themselves against the failure of firms like E.S.M. But smaller investors are discovering that in such cases their loans may turn out to be backed by thin air rather than the Treasury securities they expected. The investments at issue in the E.S.M. case are repurchase agreements, or repos, a widely used financing technique whereby local governments lend money to securities dealers. Under such an arrangement, the dealer sells securities and simultaneously agrees to repurchase them at a price high enough to compensate the lender for the use of its money. In the case of E.S.M., the firm also arranged reverse repurchase agreements, where it made loans to banks and thrift units, which provided securities to the firm as collateral.

An influential group of senators and representatives have agreed on a broad strategy linking the future of President Reagan's nuclear weapons program to signs of American ''good faith'' at the arms control talks in Geneva. The agreement by the five lawmakers, including the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Les Aspin, Democrat of Wisconsin, and Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia and senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, includes a decision to support production of 21 MX missiles in a series of votes this month. Critics and supporters have said that the support of Mr. Nunn and Mr. Aspin would virtually assure passage of the MX measure, which the President has deemed critical to success in Geneva. Under Close Scrutiny But the lawmakers also agreed, at a meeting Wednesday in Mr. Nunn's office, to press later this year for slowing the production rate of the MX, and possibly cutting back the planned deployment of 100 of the missiles. The exact numbers would depend on the lawmakers' reading of the situation in Geneva.

FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1985 International A group of five key senators and representatives has agreed on a broad strategy linking the future of President Reagan's nuclear weapons program to signs of ''good faith'' by American negotiators at the arms control talks in Geneva. One measure of this, one legislator said, would be a willingness to give some ground on President Reagan's ''Star Wars'' defense plan. (Page A1, Column 3.) The plan for a space defense system against missiles appears to be gaining strong momentum, even as members of Congress and experts outside the Government ask whether President Reagan's proposal is hurling the nation onto a new strategic weapons course before the future implications can be fully evaluated. (A1:4-5.)

New York City's economy is stronger now than at any time in the last 25 years and should continue to grow steadily, the State Comptroller said yesterday. The Comptroller, Edward V. Regan, issued his extraordinarily optimistic analysis of the city's economy as the state's Financial Control Board approved a new financial plan for the city. Mr. Regan said the city budget used the most optimistic economic assumptions since the city's fiscal crisis in the mid-1970's, when state fiscal controls were imposed. But he agreed that the assumptions were justified. The Comptroller's analysis said that last year the city added a record 76,000 jobs, saw its index of business activity reach a record, registered an increase in tourism and hotel occupancy and had continued growth in other local indicators.

A 33- year-old Arizona auto mechanic today was given his third new heart in 46 hours, the latest one a human organ to replace an experimental mechanical device. Tonight, although he showed slight improvement, he was in extremely critical condition, struggling to overcome the complications of his marathon surgery. Dr. Jack Copeland, the head of the transplant team, said the man's chances of full recovery were ''a long shot, less than 25 percent.'' But the surgeon said he was quite surprised by the improvement. The patient, identified today as Thomas Creighton, received the new human heart this morning after surviving for about 10 hours on an artificial heart that had never before been tested in a human.

Friday LEAR WITH A TWIST ''King Lear'' with, of all things, a happy ending will be the unusual opener for the Riverside Shakespeare Company's eighth season tonight at 7:30. No, Lear doesn't do a soft-shoe routine, but good things happen to his daughter Cordelia. It's an ''improved'' version of the Shakespeare tragedy, adapted in 1681 - 65 years after Shakespeare's death - by Nahum Tate, poet laureate of England, and in the 18th century it was more popular than the original. So the Riverside company (165 West 86th Street at Amsterdam Avenue) is presenting it in the interest of ''the heritage of Shakespearean performance.'' Tickets: $6.50 and $8. Reservations: 877-6810. GOTHAM ON CELLULOID

An article yesterday about an artificial heart implant at the University of Arizona misstated what a Food and Drug Administration official had told the university hospital. The agency said it did tell the hospital the procedures that should be followed to get permission for the implant, but according to spokesmen for both the agency and hospital, it did not tell the hospital not to proceed with the implant. Articles on the operation appear today on pages A1 and A18.

A film review on Wednesday of ''Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains'' misidentified a founder of A & M records. The ''A'' stands for Herb Alpert, the company's vice chairman.