What was going on when I was born?

Chalk up another entrant in the financial services derby. It is the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, once the epitome of a narrowly focused lumbering giant in one of the most conservative sectors of the financial world. Now it is shucking off its reputation as the ''Old Lady of One Madison Avenue'' as it revs up to take on the likes of the American Express Company, Sears, Roebuck & Company and the Prudential Insurance Company of America in the red hot competition for consumer money decisions. In recent months, Metropolitan has agreed to buy the Century 21 Real Estate Corporation, the country's biggest real estate sales organization, and it has purchased the London-based Albany Life Assurance Company, giving Metropolitan its first major foothold in life insurance outside the United States and Canada since the 1930's. Mutual Funds Planned Furthermore, Met Life is laying plans to go after consumer investments by introducing a line of mutual funds next year through its State Street Management and Research Company subsidiary, and it is working out arrangements to offer its universal life policyholders the additional alternative of investing in real estate within a few years.

ALTHOUGH astronomers have long sought an explanation for the intricate and strikingly symmetrical cycles of sunspots, only now have they found a way to look into the solar interior and observe deep-seated motions that may be the controlling factors. The results, reported in recent weeks by a number of observers, have led to surprises and new puzzles regarding the manner in which various parts of the sun rotate and reverberate. The findings derive in large measure from a new form of analysis - helioseismology - applied to throbbing motions of the solar surface. The motions are caused by pressure waves resonating within the solar interior, like sound waves within a ringing bell. Much can be learned from them, just as one can estimate the size and other properties of a bell from its pitch.

FOR thousands of years, the Indus River has brought the blessing of water for crops and the curse of destructive floods. But today the Indus River poses a new danger to the site of an ancient civilization that flourished at the same time as those in the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates and the Nile. Moisture and salt deposits threaten to erode and destroy the remarkable Mohenjo Daro archeological excavation that has fascinated and awed scientists and visitors since its discovery under a giant mound of earth more than 60 years ago. ''Certainly the site is in danger,'' said M. A. Halim, director of the Pakistan National Museum in Karachi. ''It is threatened by subsoil water, salts in the water and salts in the air. There is also a danger from the river itself.''

The United Technologies Corporation said yesterday that Harry J. Gray, its forceful, flamboyant chairman who has been one of the nation's most aggressive acquirers of other companies, would relinquish his additional post as chief executive officer on Jan. 1. Succeeding Mr. Gray as chief executive will be Robert F. Daniell, the company's 51-year-old president and chief operating officer, United Technologies said. Analysts said the announcement, which had been anticipated for months on Wall Street, makes Mr. Daniell the apparent successor to Mr. Gray whenever he steps down as chairman of the diversified high-technology company. Without a Contract Mr. Gray, 65 years old, is working without a contract. A year ago, he was asked by the United Technologies board to remain chairman until the end of 1985, but he has not stated publicly when he plans to retire.

For the American consumer, the attempt to devalue the dollar could bring to an end an era in which foreign goods, from coffee to fine French wines, have been bountiful and inexpensive, economists said yesterday. At the same time, however, a weaker dollar could give renewed vigor to some key United States industries, including farming, agricultural machinery and construction equipment, that have all been battered by foreign competition. A weaker dollar could also improve the outlook for jobs in these industries, economists said. The decision Sunday by finance ministers from five major industrial nations to try to weaken the dollar has set off much analysis of who would most likely benefit and who would not if the dollar falls significantly. Although the strong dollar has been widely portrayed as a villain - in Congress, for example, legislators have been actively seeking ways to protect certain American industries - its actual impact has been more mixed. A weakened dollar, though it would be greeted with relief by some, would be missed by others.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that the United States and the Soviet Union now had a ''historic opportunity'' to reduce the risk of war. But he accused Moscow of making ''blatantly one-sided'' statements that were holding up progress in the arms talks in Geneva. ''So let's get down to real business, with the seriousness the subject deserves,'' he said. Setting the stage for this week's high-level discussions here and in Washington with Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze of the Soviet Union, Mr. Shultz said at the start of the 40th meeting of the United Nations General Assembly session that signs of Soviet good faith ''will be more than matched on the American side.''

Marvin Davis, the wealthy Denver oilman, officially bid farewell to the entertainment industry today by agreeing to sell his 50 percent stake in the 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation to Rupert Murdoch for $325 million in cash. The transaction will give Mr. Murdoch, whose News America Corporation publishes The New York Post and other newspapers and magazines, sole control of one of Hollywood's major film and television production studios within months of his acquisition of six independent television stations from Metromedia Inc. With this latest purchase, Mr. Murdoch's News Corporation Ltd., with assets of more than $2 billion at the end of 1984, will have spent $1.6 billion in the last 12 months to acquire 12 trade publications from Ziff-Davis, total ownership of Fox and the six Metromedia stations. A Wall Street source close to the Australian-born Mr. Murdoch, who asked not to be named, said News Corporation would finance the purchase of Mr. Davis's share of Fox through bank credit lines and cash generated by existing operations.

In a setback to large banks that want to cross state boundaries, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation proposed revised guidelines today that would restrict big-city banks in takeovers of banks in smaller communities and that would facilitate mergers of one small bank with another. The three-member board of the F.D.I.C. voted to put out for public comment a policy statement that called for more stringent anticompetitive tests to be applied when a large big-city bank seeks to enter an out-of-state market by buying out one of the larger banks in that market. Today's proposed policy statement applies to the acquisition of the 9,000 banks regulated by the F.D.I.C. These are banks that are not members of the Federal Reserve System; those member banks are generally larger. Any merger involving one of the 9,000 banks requires F.D.I.C. approval.

National guidelines were approved today for a revolutionary type of medical treatment known as gene therapy, to be used on humans against a range of fatal hereditary diseases. The treatment involves transplanting genes, which are the body's basic blueprints for cell construction, to correct genetic defects that cause these illnesses. Months of Discussion Today's approval by a Government advisory panel, came after more than seven months of discussion and public comment. Under the guidelines, each case in which gene therapy is proposed must still be approved by local review committees and the Federal Government.

A Federal judge in Brooklyn, in an unusual ruling, yesterday sentenced a woman convicted of insurance fraud to ''house arrest,'' saying she must be confined to her home for two years. The judge, Jack B. Weinstein of Federal District Court, said he had imposed the sentence because he doubted that the defendant could be rehabilitated in jail. He also said he believed that controls other than imprisonment were needed to halt the expanding prison population. The concept of probation under house arrest has been applied in state cases in California and Florida, probation officials said, but has rarely been used in Federal courts.

CONGRESS has blocked virtually all the cuts in aid to college students that the Reagan Administration proposed last winter and, with no visible Administration opposition, Congressional subcommittees are drafting legislation to keep grants, loans and work opportunities essentially intact for five years. Senator Robert T. Stafford, the Vermont Republican who heads the Senate Education, Arts and Humanities Subcommittee, said he expected some ''fine tuning'' of the Higher Education Act, including a new test of the ability of a family to pay for the applicant's education. Both he and Representative William D. Ford, chairman of the House Postsecondary Education Subcommittee, said they were worried by the amount of debt college students were taking on but conceded that budget constraints would prevent expansion of grants to reduce the need for loans. Mr. Ford, a Michigan Democrat, said he expected new formulas to funnel more aid to part-time and adult students who make up an increasing percentage of college enrollments. He said the Reagan proposals for major changes and financing cuts ''had no support.''

President Reagan today announced a plan to subsidize some exports in an effort to open foreign markets to American goods. He also said the Administration would put pressure on other governments to drop what the Administration considers unfair trade barriers. Spurred by a wave of sentiment in Congress to curtail imports, Mr. Reagan coupled his longstanding opposition to protectionist legislation with a series of proposals to ''sell more of our goods to other nations.'' In doing so, Mr. Reagan plainly sought to blunt bipartisan Congressional efforts to impose quotas and raise tariffs to protect American jobs.