What was going on when I was born?

John J. McLaughlin, who resigned last month as president of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, was indicted yesterday on charges that included stealing more than $250,000 from a woman whom he had represented as an attorney and financial trustee. The grand jury indictment was announced by District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau of Manhattan. He said Mr. McLaughlin was now under investigation in connection with his activities as an official of the Hospitals Corporation. Mr. McLaughlin, who is 39 years old, resigned from his $95,500-a-year post on Aug. 16, after advising city officials that he was under investigation by the District Attorney.

The Reagan Administration said today that talks last week with Vietnamese officials in Hanoi were ''the most positive'' to date in the 12-year effort to resolve the problem of Americans unaccounted for in the Vietnam War. A State Department spokesman, Charles E. Redman, said that ''I am pleased to state that the talks were very productive'' and that the meeting ''took place in a constructive atmosphere.'' Last Wednesday and Thursday, a four-member United States team led by Richard Childress, the political and military affairs director of the National Security Council staff, met with the acting Vietnamese Foreign Minister, Vo Dong Giang, and with Deputy Foreign Minister Hoang Bich Son. Originally, a higher-level American delegation, led by Richard L. Armitage, Assistant Secretary of Defense, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, had been scheduled to meet with Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach. But when Mr. Thach informed Washington on Aug. 23 that he had to travel to Moscow, Mr. Armitage and Mr. Wolfowitz canceled plans at the last minute to fly to Hanoi.

Hanson Trust P.L.C. sharply raised its bid for the SCM Corporation yesterday to $72 a share, or a total of $878 million, in cash. Wall Street professionals, taking a gamble that a competing bidder, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, might respond with a higher offer, bid up the price of SCM stock yesterday by $5, to $72, on the New York Stock Exchange. The gamble may have been in vain, however. Sources close to the situation said that Merrill Lynch would ''probably drop out,'' taking an estimated $10 million consolation prize for joining in the bidding.

The Defense Department has proposed canceling a new Air Force training plane that is the mainstay of the Fairchild Republic Company's aircraft plant on Long Island, Pentagon and industry sources said today. The sources said the Air Force proposed the cancellation of the $3.5 billion program in Pentagon budget documents, as part of a budget-trimming exercise, and the move had been approved by Deputy Secretary of Defense William H. Taft 4th. His endorsement came two weeks ago in a classified ''program decision memorandum,'' the sources added. Officials said management deficiencies at the Farmingdale plant, which the Air Force had previously made public, figured in the decision to eliminate the plane, the T-46A. #3,600 Employees at Plant Aerospace industry analysts said its cancellation could be fatal to the Republic plant in Farmingdale, which employs 3,600 people.

CBS Inc., looking for ways to pay for its costly takeover fight earlier this summer with Ted Turner, announced yesterday that it would offer early retirement to 2,000 employees, or about 7 percent of its work force. The program will be offered to all employees who are at least 55 years old and have at least 10 years of pension credit. CBS said the option provided ''significantly increased'' pension benefits. Last July, in a decisive maneuver against the Atlanta broadcast entrepreneur, CBS offered to buy 21 percent of its own shares. It paid for the stock with a package of cash and new securities. Not only did the moveput value in the hands of restless shareholders, but the notes issued also carried conditions barring the type of offer Mr. Turner had made.

A major real estate company has agreed to buy the troubled Equity Programs Investment Corporation if the private mortgage insurers backing Equity Programs' securities contribute $100 million to such a bailout, investment banking sources said yesterday. Equity Programs, once a little-known investment company, became the subject of widespread concern in the financial community last month when it was disclosed that the company had failed to make payments on mortgages and mortgage-related securities it had issued to fund the purchase of 20,000 single-family homes. Finding a buyer for Equity Programs would not only avert a formal default by the company but would also prevent its problems from touching off a loss of investor confidence in the real estate-related securities market. Syndicator Held Interested The investment banking sources declined to disclose the identity of the real estate company that has agreed to a purchase if its conditions are met. But they said that, similar to Equity Programs, the potential buyer is a syndicator, meaning that it is in the business of raising money from the public and investing the proceeds in real estate ventures.

The nation's principal black mine workers' union announced today that it had suspended a strike against selected mines after less than three days. The union said the decision to halt the strike, called over pay demands, had been made to protect striking workers from threatened dismissals and evictions. It had been called at five gold mines and two coal mines. The suspension of the strike reduced a threat to two of South Africa's principal exports, gold and coal, and lessened the possibility of violence spreading to the mining industry. #630 Killed in a Year The announcement came on the first anniversary of the violence that began in the black township of Sharpeville over rent increases and has since spread throughout the country, resulting in the deaths of more 630 people, the overwhelming majority of them black.

Mayor Koch and his two major challengers for the Democratic mayoral nomination agreed yesterday that the city's Board of Education should be reorganized but disagreed on how to do it. The Mayor said the board should include academic specialists and prestigious private citizens. He said ethnic and political considerations now figure in appointments. If he had the power to appoint more members, he said, he might prefer others to his own appointees, Miguel O. Martinez and Amelia H. Ashe, whose appointments, he said, took ethnic and political considerations into account. Mr. Martinez is of Hispanic origin and, at the time of her appointment, Mrs. Ashe was the only woman on the board. Unpaid Members City Council President Carol Bellamy said that the present board is ''awful'' and that it should instead be made up of part-time, unpaid people, ''who will not spend their time messing around in the day-to-day operations of the education system.'' She said the chancellor should be ''the strong point'' in the system.

An article in Business Day on Aug. 19 about barbecue grills incorrectly described the part the Ford Motor Company played in the origins of charcoal as a consumer product. Half a century ago, wood was more common as an auto component, so scrap for charcoal was obtainable in several ways, not simply from station wagon trim. And while Ford Motor did require its auto dealers to sell its briquettes, it did not require that they accept a carload for each carload of autos shipped.

The White House, responding to remarks by Mikail S. Gorbachev, said today that President Reagan was willing to meet the Soviet Union ''halfway in an effort to solve problems.'' Mr. Reagan is ''taking a serious approach to the relationship,'' the White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, said. Mr. Speakes urged the Soviet Union to allow President Reagan ''direct access'' to the Russian people through a television speech as a way to improve relations between the two nations. Senators Talk to Gorbachev In Moscow, a delegation of United States senators met for three and a half hours today with Mr. Gorbachev and said afterward that he had indicated his country might be flexible at the Geneva arms talks. [Page A6.] Mr. Speakes said the meeting in Geneva between Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev, planned for Nov. 19-20, offered a framework in which both leaders would conduct ''serious discussions'' on arms control, the Middle East, human rights and other issues.

A chart in Business Day on Saturday with an article on the Canadian gold industry omitted the standard of measurement in comparing sales of Canadian Maple Leaf coins and South African Krugerrands. Sales were in millions of troy ounces.

In Chicago, it was called the ''chocolate phos,'' for phosphate. To New Yorkers, it was a chocolate soda. Louis Schwartz's memory of the chocolate soda of the 1920's and 1930's is as rich as the syrup and as effervescent as the seltzer water used to make it. Mr. Schwartz, who grew up in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side, recalls neighborhood candy stores with sliding windows and marble counters facing the sidewalk. There, for a nickel or less, he and his pals would each order a soda. ''There was something about the natural flavor of good chocolate fizzed before your eyes,'' he said.