What was going on when I was born?

Republican leaders on Capitol Hill said today that the Reagan Administration was willing to respond to the political pressures building in Congress by considering additional measures to correct the nation's soaring trade imbalance. These leaders said that a package of trade measures advanced by President Reagan over the weekend to open foreign markets to American exports would not be sufficient to calm the concern over jobs that is now surging across Capitol Hill. After meeting today with Donald T. Regan, the President's chief of staff, the Republicans said that the Administration now also understood the need for additional action. Today's developments indicate that the Administration seems willing to reassess its earlier stand against any trade legislation, which officials have repeatedly labeled as protectionist. Congressional Republicans were clearly ready to ignore White House objections and propose their own trade program, and Mr. Regan's visit to Capitol Hill today showed that the Administration was finally responding to their concerns.

Rioting youths threw bottles and bricks at Britain's Home Secretary today as violence erupted in this industrial city for a second straight day. The Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, had stepped out of his automobile in the Handsworth area of Birmingham, where the rioting first erupted late Monday, and had told a crowd gathered there that he had come to listen. At that moment, bottles, stones and bricks came flying at him. As he was hurried away, gangs of youths overturned cars and set fire to several buildings with gasoline bombs.

A report in the Company News column of Business Day on Friday about the Peabody International Corporation incorrectly described a merger. The company is to be acquired by the Pullman Company in an exchange of stock. The report also characterized Pullman incorrectly. The company, which formerly made railroad cars and was based in Chicago, now makes truck trailers and aircraft seating, and is based in Princeton, N.J.

The stock of the General Foods Corporation rose sharply for the second consecutive day yesterday as rumors spread that the First Boston Corporation, one of Wall Street's premier investment banking firms, had placed the issue on its restricted list. Such a move by First Boston, if true, might portend a takeover bid for General Foods, one of the nation's foremost consumer products companies, according to Wall Street analysts. The restricted list, which is supposed to be confidential, would prohibit First Boston sales personnel from soliciting trades in General Foods stock. It is intended to help the brokerage staff avoid any conflict of interest if First Boston should become involved in a corporate transaction, like a merger, involving General Foods.

With pressure mounting to find ways to shore up the beleaguered Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation and provide assistance to a growing number of troubled thrift institutions, the House Banking Committee today begins two days of hearings on the industry's problems. In recent days, Federal regulators and industry groups have offered a flurry of proposals to deal with the thrift industry's troubles. While the committee is scheduled to hear testimony today to learn the magnitude and urgency of the situation, members are under pressure to make some legislative decisions over the next few weeks, because measures that have been used in the past to help troubled thrift institutions are now expiring. On Oct. 15, for example, regulators lose the powers to issue ''net worth'' certificates to help shore up the net worth of troubled thrift institutions.

Mayor Koch, showing overwhelming strength in every section of the city, won renomination in the Democratic primary yesterday. The landslide victory made Mr. Koch a virtual certainty to win a third term in the Nov. 5 general election, in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 5 to 1. The 60-year-old Mayor won in all five boroughs and in all but three predominantly black districts and a West Side white district of the city's 60 Assembly districts. He easily defeated his two major challengers, City Council President Carol Bellamy and Assemblyman Herman D. Farrell Jr., and three lesser-known candidates. The Vote Tally With 99 percent of the votes counted, the tally was: Koch#429,760 (64%) Bellamy#126,661 (19%) Farrell * 89,056 (13%) The Mayor claimed victory at 11 P.M., telling cheering supporters at the Sheraton Centre that ''for me, this was the most important and best campaign I've ever been involved with.'' Miss Bellamy and Mr. Farrell had conceded about a half-hour earlier.

Thomas Brown pointed to a bruise on his leg the shape of a four-inch diamond. ''See this here? A snapper did this,'' said Mr. Brown, a 74-year-old trapper. ''He got through my pants, and if he bit any harder he would have gotten a piece of me.'' Mr. Brown traps snapping turtles this time of year, a calling that requires a mastery of some little-known skills, a taste for turtle chowder and a resolve to confront what may be the meanest reptile in the state.

The chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Robert R. Kiley, held a peacemaking session here today with Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, who had been criticizing New York's transit system and the people running it. On emerging from the 45-minute meeting in Mr. D'Amato's Senate office, the two men emphasized that they wanted to work together. Mr. Kiley gave the New York Republican a thick document describing how the M.T.A. planned to improve its management of federally financed construction projects. He also agreed to keep Federal officials better posted on the progress of these projects.

TEN years ago a good buy at the grocery store was at the top of most shopping lists. Today it seems to have taken a back seat to convenience. More and more these days people are simply unable or unwilling to devote hours to the daily preparation of food. This is confirmed not only by the ever-growing popularity of items such as precooked frozen foods and carryout dishes but also by several recent surveys indicating that the quicker food can be put on the table, the better. Doreen Mott, associate director for consumer services at the Good Housekeeping Institute, said, ''We used to feature a 30-minute dish. Now it's a 30-minute menu and people keep writing to ask, 'Could you get it down to 20 minutes?' '' It's hardly surprising then that, according to the Market Research Corporation of America, the number of shops selling exclusively prepared foods is rising steadily, or that consumption of so-called gourmet frozen dinners such as Armour's Dinner Classics, Swanson's Le Menu, Benihana Frozen Dinners and Stouffer's Lean Cuisine has almost quadrupled in the last year, to 140 million individual servings.

THE enormous wave of interest in cooking lessons that surged in the late 1970's and early 80's seems to have crested, according to a number of New York City's cooking teachers. Though no official statistics are kept, many smaller schools, which often consist of an individual teacher operating out of his or her own kitchen, have fallen by the wayside, a prey to a combination of rising costs and dropping enrollments. Even some of the better-known teachers have dropped out, temporarily or permanently, to write cookbooks or pursue other careers in the food business. Others continue to teach by adding courses that reflect the changing interests of students, doing new things that they would not have thought of five years ago. And a limited few, among them stars of the cooking class world like Giuliano Bugialli and Lydie Marshall, are continuing to do what has brought them success over the years. As far as students are concerned, ''Numbers have dropped off,'' said Elizabeth Andoh, who will be taking a leave of absence from her Japanese cooking classes this fall to promote her new book, ''An American Taste of Japan'' (Morrow).

Bishop Edmond L. Browning of Hawaii, a liberal churchman with strong international experience, was elected today as the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. His selection over three other nominees to serve for a 12-year term suggests that the 2.8-million-member church will move in a direction that is more congenial to its liberals than was the tenure of the outgoing Presiding Bishop, John M. Allin of Mississippi. Bishop Browning, a 56-year-old Texan who has served as a bishop in Europe and Okinawa, has been a strong supporter of the ordination of women to the priesthood. An Opponent of Arms Race The ordination of women was rejected by Bishop Allin on doctrinal grounds, although he posed no obstacles to such an ordination once it was adopted as church policy in 1976.

''During the Inquisition in Spain people were forbidden to talk so that there wouldn't be conflicts,'' said Mercedes Pulido de Briceno. ''And I have realized that when it comes to women, it's like the Inquisition here at the U.N.'' As the recently appointed Coordinator for the Improvement of the Status of Women in the United Nations Secetariat, with the rank of Assistant Secretary General, Mrs. Pulido de Briceno is undaunted by resistance to her proposals for drastic changes for women in the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the world body. Mrs. Pulido de Briceno, a former minister and Cabinet member in the Venezuelan Government, acknowledges that her task is difficult: some United Nations secretaries, the vast majority of them women, are still called upon to help polish the household silver before a dinner party. Nearly seven years ago, the General Assembly ordered that women should fill one-fourth of all the professional posts in the Secretariat that are subject to ''geographical distribution'' - that is, posts that are distributed among member states roughly in proportion to their United Nations budget contributions. That target has not been met. By last year, about 700 professional posts, or 22.5 percent of the total, were held by women, up only 0.4 percent since 1982.