What was going on when I was born?

The man accused of killing a Westchester County police officer and a Mount Vernon woman was shot and killed in a state police car on the Taconic State Parkway today. The state police in Fishkill said tonight that the suspect, Alex J. Mengel, had grappled with an officer over the officer's gun and was shot by a second officer, who was driving the car. Mr. Mengel was being returned to Westchester after an arraignment in Greene County. The State Police Superintendent, Donald O. Chesworth, gave this account: ''While proceeding south on the Taconic State Parkway, Mengel struggled with a state police investigator in an attempt to obtain control over the investigator's firearm. ''Another state police investigator, who was driving the automobile, fired one shot which struck and killed Mengel.''

When a well-dressed black visitor to the Terrell County Courthouse here recently asked a white secretary in the probate judge's office for directions to the ladies' room, she was told, ''Just go downstairs.'' On her way down rickety wooden stairs to the basement, the visitor asked further directions from a white-haired black man, the courthouse janitor. He told her to go back upstairs to the sheriff's office, across the lobby from the probate judge's office, for the key to the ladies' room that is located on the main floor. The first-floor restroom, it turns out, is generally used by white women, whose exclusive preserve it was in the days of Jim Crow laws, while black women generally continue to use the basement restroom. The two are not far apart, but the steps between them are steps into a time warp, steps that many blacks in this rural southwest Georgia town take every business day.

The State Department said today that a high-level American official on a two-week trip to the Middle East had failed to get an agreement for direct talks between Israel and Jordan. Despite the continuing deadlock, the department announced that Secretary of State George P. Shultz would add Egypt and Jordan to his trip to Israel, which begins on May 9. Some State Department aides had previously said Mr. Shultz would go to Cairo and Amman only if the American official, Richard W. Murphy Jr., the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, made significant progress in his advance mission, which is nearly completed.

The Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc allies today formally extended the Warsaw Pact for 20 years in a ceremony presided over by Mikhail S. Gorbachev on his first visit abroad as Soviet leader. Mr. Gorbachev and the leaders of the seven nations in the Soviet-led military bloc agreed at a two-hour meeting to renew the 30-year-old pact, whose expiration date was May 15. Polish television coverage of the signing ceremony focused largely on Mr. Gorbachev, who was shown being greeted with some deference by the older men who are the party leaders of the other member nations - Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Rumania. Gorbachev's Tone Is Muted In marked contrast to a speech in Moscow three days ago, in which he said Washington was not seeking an agreement in the Geneva arms talks, Mr. Gorbachev toned down his characterizations of the United States in his remarks today. Instead he stressed Soviet proposals for mutual nuclear rollbacks, which he said could only follow the abandonment of United States plans for deploying weapons in space.

The crew of a United States Air National Guard plane rescued three fliers last weekend from a Nicaraguan-owned plane that had crashed on the Greenland icecap. A spokesman for the embassy of Denmark, of which Greenland is a territory, quoted a report from the Danish police in Greenland as saying that Aeronica, the Nicaraguan domestic and international airline, had bought the plane in Southern Yemen and that it was being ferried to Nicaragua. The Danish police report said the five-man crew that had been hired in Southern Yemen included an American, an Israeli and an Indian, who were the three survivors. The others were a Filipino, who died in the crash, and a Jordanian, who died later of injuries and cold. The temperature during the night on the icecap was 13 degrees below zero.

In a stern lecture to 327 of the city's top police commanders, Commissioner Benjamin Ward yesterday warned that he would hold each of them personally responsible for brutality or corruption in their commands. Reacting to recent charges that police officers had tortured and abused prisoners in the 106th Precinct in Queens, Mr. Ward said he felt ''personal shame and disgrace.'' But he added that he would not allow the spate of brutality complaints to drive him out of office. No police officers have been convicted of charges in the cases. ''I'm not going to stay here until the pressure builds to where I have to consider resigning or the Mayor has to consider replacing me,'' Mr. Ward said at a news conference after meeting for half an hour at Police Headquarters in lower Manhattan with officers of the rank of captain or higher.

A helicopter taking off from a heliport along the East River at 34th Street plunged into the water yesterday afternoon, setting off a dramatic rescue that saved five of the six passengers and the crew of two. Police officers and a Fire Department diver went repeatedly into the submerged and darkened craft to pull out the sixth passenger, who was trapped by his seat belt. After 30 minutes, the diver found the man, cut his belt free with a knife and pulled him out. But the trapped man, identified only as a 40-year-old West German businessman, died after being taken to the Bellevue Hospital Center suffering from cardiac arrest and low body temperature. The five other passengers were rescued in swift fashion by bystanders and heliport employees who leaped into the chilly water after they saw the craft go down at 2:25 P.M. in a spray of water 50 feet off shore.

The Senate overwhelmingly urged President Reagan today to cancel his planned visit to a German military cemetery. By a voice vote, the Senate adopted a resolution co-sponsored by 82 legislators hailing the reconciliation between the United States and West Germany but adding, ''The President should reassess his planned itinerary during his forthcoming trip to the Federal Republic of Germany.'' Instead of visiting the military cemetery at Bitburg, the resolution said, Mr. Reagan ''should visit a symbol of German democracy.'' Opposition Has Grown The unusual Senate resolution came amid a growing chorus of opposition to Mr. Reagan's planned visit on May 5 to the cemetery, where 49 SS soldiers are buried among 2,000 German war dead. The outcry against the cemetery visit has embarrassed the White House, strained relations between the United States and West Germany and stirred protests from Jewish groups, veterans' organizations and others.

The United States today ordered the expulsion of a Soviet military attache in retaliation for what it called ''the unacceptable Soviet position'' toward the killing of an American Army officer in East Germany last month. A senior State Department official also said President Reagan had directed Secretary of State George P. Shultz to continue to raise the American concern over the slaying by a Soviet guard on March 24 of Maj. Arthur D. Nicholson Jr. Major Nicholson was a member of the United States military liaison mission permitted by agreement to travel and observe Soviet forces in East Germany. Mr. Shultz is likely to discuss the matter with Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko when they meet in Vienna on May 14, the official said.

The Soviet leadership announced a minimal remembrance for Konstantin U. Chernenko today, six weeks after he died, which included renaming a small town in his honor. The town, Sharypovo, in a western Siberian grain-growing area, has a population of under 20,000.

President Reagan and President Chun Doo Hwan of South Korea expressed concern today over the continued forward deployment of North Korean troops closer to the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas. But after a White House meeting, the two leaders also said that they were encouraged by steps toward reconciliation now being made between North and South Korea. A senior Administration official, who took part in the meeting, said that although North Korea's military moves and its agreement to meet next month to hold talks on trade relations seemed contradictory, they probably reflected North Korea's uncertainty over how to achieve its longstanding goal of Korean unification.

President Reagan directed his top security and foreign-policy advisers today to review possible United States measures against the Nicaraguan Government. The White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, said Mr. Reagan had requested a review of a ''full family'' of economic, political and other measures, which he declined to specify. Asserting that he did not want to raise ''scare tactics,'' Mr. Speakes said the possibilities did not include the use of United States military forces in Central America. The review was announced at the daily White House press briefing two days after the House defeated an Administration request for $14 million in aid to Nicaraguan rebels.