What was going on when I was born?

The chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Paul A. Volcker, expressed reservations to Congress today about a possible merger of the Government's two biggest deposit-insurance funds. Mr. Volcker acknowledged that a move to combine the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation would ''in principle'' seem ''appropriate.'' But he conditioned his support on the adoption of equivalent regulatory standards for commercial banks and savings and loan institutions, which seemed to imply tougher standards for the thrift units. The central bank chief testified at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on changes in Federal deposit insurance. The question of merging the two insurance funds has come up because the savings and loan insurance fund experienced its first shrinkage last year as payouts to failed and troubled associations exceeded income.

Merrill Lynch Capital Markets appeared yesterday to have made the winning bid to buy the SCM Corporation, but may yet have a major battle on its hands for the giant typewriter, food and chemical company. Joining forces with the Prudential Insurance Company and SCM executives, Merrill Lynch Capital, the investment banking arm of Merrill Lynch & Company, yesterday offered stockholders $74 a share, or $906.5 million, prompting Hanson Trust P.L.C., the British conglomerate and SCM's only other suitor, to withdraw its competing offer of $72 a share. By late yesterday, however, enormously heavy buying of SCM stock hit the New York Stock Exchange, with sources friendly to SCM contending that Hanson was the buyer. These sources estimated that Hanson had purchased between 1.5 million and 2 million SCM shares before the 4 P.M. trading halt, and may have continued buying in other markets after the Big Board closed.

Ten former students at the Choate-Rosemary Hall preparatory school pleaded guilty today to Federal charges of financing a cocaine-buying trip to Venezuela by two other students. The United States Attorney for Connecticut, Alan H. Nevas, said the unsuccessful scheme would have marked the seventh time since 1982 that cocaine had been imported from Caracas, Venezuela, and distributed among students at the private boarding school in Wallingford. ''The use of cocaine at Choate in 1984 was very widespread,'' Mr. Nevas said. A grand jury has subpoenaed school officials in connection with a continuing cocaine investigation, he said.

President P. W. Botha said today that the Government was prepared to discuss steps to restore the citizenship rights of nearly 10 million blacks. They were stripped of their citizenship when their tribal homelands became nominally independent. Addressing whites in Bloemfontein's City Hall at the Orange Free State congress of the governing National Party, Mr. Botha said he was prepared to ''negotiate'' the issue with leaders of the homelands of Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei,and proposed that their residents hold dual citizenship. Mr. Botha's offer, which he has mentioned in previous speeches but not previously detailed, represents a major departure from a basic tenet of apartheid, that ultimately there will be no South African black citizens. It was also a further step in his program of limited changes in racial policies.

The Senate Republican leadership blocked a Democratic effort today to force the Senate to vote on the Congressional version of economic sanctions against the Government of South Africa. The proposed measures are stronger than the sanctions ordered Monday by President Reagan. But the Democrats, who supported cloture unanimously and had the backing of some Republicans, said they planned to keep the issue alive for weeks and to force a series of votes intended to underline Congressional objections to President Reagan's policy on South Africa. Strong Feelings Shown In a demonstration of the strong feelings that are developing on the issue, about a dozen Democratic House members who belong to the Congressional Black Caucus walked onto the Senate floor today just as the Senate began to vote on a motion to cut off debate and open the way for a vote on sanctions legislation that has passed the House. The Republican leadership prevented approval of cloture, which would have stopped a filibuster and forced a Senate vote on the sanctions legislation itself. The measure before the Senate contains more stringent provisions than those contained in an executive order signed by President Reagan on Monday.

Hours after his sweeping victory in Tuesday's Democratic primary, Mayor Koch was back shaking hands with subway riders at an East Side IRT station yesterday, beginning what is likely to be a less hotly contested and considerably less expensive general-election campaign. The only concession he made to late-night celebrating was to sleep until 7 A.M., 90 minutes later than usual, and to forgo his usual 45-minute prework exercise at a midtown gymnasium. Instead, he exercised his hand greeting subway riders at the 77th Street station of the Lexington Avenue line, not far from Gracie Mansion. In winning an overwhelming 64 percent of the vote, Mr. Koch got support from all areas of the city, including most of the black and Hispanic districts. He had lost nearly all of them in the 1981 mayoral primary and the 1982 gubernatorial primary.

National Intergroup Inc., pulling a thorn out of its corporate side, said yesterday that it had reached an agreement with the Leucadia National Corporation to buy 75 percent of the National Intergroup stock held by Leucadia. Unlike many such deals, however, the company did not have to pay a premium to get its stock back. In fact, National Intergroup will pay Leucadia $24 a share in cash - $3.50 below the stock's closing price yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange and about the same price that Leucadia had paid for its holding of 1,823,300 shares of common, or 7.8 percent. The stock was down $1 on the day. Leucadia, which had tried to buy National Intergroup, will receive a warrant to purchase 1,367,475 National Intergroup shares at $30.75 a share. The warrant expires in September 1988. Leucadia also entered into a standstill agreement that removes any threat of a takeover by Leucadia for 10 years.

Ten miles from the sandlots where he began playing baseball as a boy, Pete Rose, now 44 years old and in his 23d season in the major leagues, stepped to the plate tonight in the first inning at Riverfront Stadium. He came to bat on this warm, gentle evening with the chance to make baseball history. The Reds' player-manager, the man who still plays with the joy of a boy, had a chance to break Ty Cobb's major-league career hit record, 4,191, which had stood since Cobb retired in 1928. The sell-out crowd of 47,237 that packed the stadium hoping to see Rose do it now stood and cheered under a twilight blue sky beribboned with orange clouds.

AFTER speeding from his home in Vermont to the Boston airport, Jeffrey Aronson could not reach the gate to meet his 15-year-old daughter, Blake, who was flying in from New Orleans for her annual visit. Held back in the crowd, he eventually spotted her. ''Instead of my child, this teen-ager arrived,'' he recalled. ''I hadn't seen Jeff in a whole year,'' Blake Aronson said, ''and I worried about what I was going to say to this man. I was so quiet.''

The personal computer on Alexander Crosett's desk at the Lotus Development Corporation let out a piercing shriek this morning and Mr. Crosett, one of the company's marketing managers, rushed over and found that Lotus's stock price had just set a new low for the year. The decline was only the latest round in a selling spree fueled by reports that the industry's troubles have finally caught up with the seemingly invincible leader of personal computer software. But Mr. Crosett was only partly displeased by the news. For the warning beep was audible evidence that Lotus's newest product, Signal, which will be introduced next week, was performing on cue. Besides alerting its user to key price movements of a favorite stock, Signal can revalue an entire portfolio of several hundred stocks as their prices change and automatically analyze the implications of new stock price levels on a Lotus 1-2-3 financial spreadsheet. New Market Segment If the $595 hardware-and-software package succeeds, it will propel Lotus into an entirely new segment of the computer market - one consisting of hundreds of thousands of avid stock market investors, small brokerage firms and financial advisers who already use 1-2-3 but do not have access to the giant computer systems of the major Wall Street players.

''We are not going to sacrifice 946,000 children to have 1 in a classroom.'' - Schools Chancellor Nathan Quinones. [B11:3.]

The White House assured Republican Congressional leaders today that it was drafting new proposals for trade legislation in an effort to head off protectionist measures pending on Capitol Hill. At the same time, President Reagan was told by some Republican legislators that further action on trade was crucial if the President's plan for overhauling the tax system is to be enacted by Congress. Legislation on restricting imports has emerged as the priority domestic issue in Congress, with momentum building quickly in the face of the record trade deficit and the continued loss of American jobs. ''If we don't act on trade before we act on tax reform, I don't think there will be any tax reform bill,'' said Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania after a White House meeting between key Republican legislators and Mr. Reagan.