What was going on when I was born?

Senior Administration officials said today that there was a strong chance of a Presidential veto if Congressional conferees did not drastically change the foreign aid authorization bill that was passed by the House on Thursday. A high-ranking State Department official said the foreign aid authorization bills - another version was approved by the Senate in May - provided about $1 billion less than what the President sought. The House bill authorizes $12.6 billion in each of the fiscal years 1986 and 1987; the Senate version authorizes $12.8 billion for 1986. Restrictions on President The officials made it clear that the Administration considered the House bill particularly objectionable because of several amendments limiting the President's power in foreign affairs.

Mayor Koch opened 1985 with a proposal to double the number of yellow medallion taxis in the city. Four months later, facing a wave of opposition from cabdrivers, he pulled back and called for a 10 percent increase. Now even that plan, those most involved with it say, seems headed for oblivion. To New Yorkers who feel that finding a cab during rush hours sometimes seems as likely as winning the lottery, this year's proposals are just the latest in a long series of taxi plans that have begun life with a burst of publicity and then died a quiet death. Some Council members say the Mayor has not made the issue a major priority. Even the Mayor says he is not set on having it his way.

A Turk who Mehmet Ali Agca says was a key figure in a plot to shoot Pope John Paul II has given the Turkish police a detailed account of his involvement in arms and drug-smuggling operations that he says were based in Bulgaria, according to transcripts of a four-day interrogation here. But according to the documents, the Turk, Bekir Celenk, consistently denied that he ever knew Mr. Agca, the convicted assailant of the Pope. Mr. Agca has said Mr. Celenk acted as intermediary for a Soviet diplomat in Bulgaria and offered Mr. Agca $1.2 million to assassinate the Pope. Being Tried in Rome Mr. Agca, who is serving a life sentence in Italy for his crime, is the key witness in the trial of eight people, including Mr. Celenk, accused of conspiring to murder the Pope.

The polyp found in President Reagan's large intestine is of a type that statistically has a substantial chance of proving to be malignant. The operation to remove it, scheduled for Saturday, is classified as major surgery. Under normal circumstances, most physicians would not describe such an abdominal operation as life-threatening. But there is always a slim chance of complications affecting the heart and lungs, even a chance of death, when a person of Mr. Reagan's age undergoes general anesthesia and major surgery.

The crack in Republican unity widened today as the Senate majority leader, Bob Dole, accused President Reagan and both parties in the House of ''surrendering to the deficit.'' Mr. Dole also said White House officials were backing away from tough decisions on spending cuts and said the President's chief of staff was none too eager to deal with the budget. The sharp remarks by Mr. Dole, a Kansas Republican, reflect the anger in Senate Republican ranks that developed this week after the President dropped his support for the Senate's plan to freeze Social Security benefits for one year and did not insist on specific spending cuts in return. House Democrats, led by Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., and House Republicans had insisted that no change be made in the cost-of-living adjustment. The President, in turn, continued to insist that there be no inrease in taxes.

President Reagan will undergo surgery Saturday to remove a large polyp that was discovered today in his large intestine, the White House said. The new polyp was described by doctors as precancerous, meaning it has a higher chance of becoming cancerous than other types of polyps. Mr. Reagan had gone to the Bethesda Naval Medical Center for removal of a benign, or noncancerous, growth that was detected in an examination March 8. The Navy doctors removed a piece of the new, larger polyp in a procedure known as a biopsy. Pathologists were examining it to determine its type and whether it is cancerous. Those results are expected to be known before the operation starts Saturday.

Heavy rains, an extraordinary phenomenon in the drought-ravaged western Sudan, are seriously hindering efforts to deliver food to hundreds of thousands of famine victims, according to relief workers who have recently returned from the region. Unless washed-out bridges and roads can be repaired and normal food supplies quickly resumed, relief workers say, deaths from starvation and disease are likely to increase sharply. Sudanese officials say 450,000 people are most seriously at risk in the region of Darfur, an area roughly the size of France. #7 Dry Years Darfur, which is home to three million people, has been in the grip of drought for the last three years; some parts have been without significant rainfall for as long as seven years.

As a student revolutionary, he helped ignite the war in the streets that shook El Salvador in 1979. Today, as the senior commander of leftist guerrilla forces, he directs a military campaign that has forced the United States to make a major military commitment to this small country. His name is Joaquin Villalobos, a man well known to the Salvadoran Army and the Central Intelligence Agency, but almost never seen publicly in El Salvador and virtually unheard of in the outside world. If records are accurate, he has just celebrated his 34th birthday. Of all the rebel commanders, Mr. Villalobos appears the most militaristic, relying heavily on force of arms.

Leftist guerrillas attacked El Salvador's largest prison today with mortar and rifle fire and 104 prisoners escaped in the confusion, the prison commander said.

Thirty-seven Vietnamese, believed to be ''boat people'' fleeing their homeland, have been returned to Vietnam by a Soviet freighter that plucked them from the South China Sea, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said today. Officials of the United Nations commission said it was the first time to their knowledge that Vietnamese refugees had been returned home in all the years since the end of the Vietnam War 10 years ago began a mass exodus from the Southeast Asian nation. More than 555,000 Vietnamese have fled since the fall of Saigon, many of them in rickety, often unseaworthy craft or private boats. Thousands have died in the South China Sea of starvation, dehydration, accidents and pirate attacks.

The police said today that they were looking for a Frenchman who was seen near the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior before a bomb sank it. They said they had asked the international police organization Interpol to help track him.

India has donated $9.6 million to a fund that enables famine-stricken African countries to buy Indian wheat. Salman Haidar, a spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs, said today that the fund would be administered by the Organization of African Unity. India has already contributed 100,000 tons of wheat for African relief.