What was going on when I was born?

The Senate today voted to provide $7.5 billion over the next five years to clean up hazardous waste dumps. The vote of 86 to 13 reflected the broad public acceptance and political potency that the hazardous waste legislation has acquired since it was first enacted five years ago. The money for the cleanup is to be raised from several sources, but under the Senate bill the bulk of the funds would come from a new broad-based tax on manufacturers and processors of raw materials with sales of $5 million or more annually. The tax, eight-hundredths of 1 percent, would be paid on the value of the materials manufactured or processed. The money would go to clean up toxic chemicals, metals and other hazardous materials that have been deposited in landfills or elsewhere in such a way that they threaten public health or the environment.

Mayor Koch and Governor Cuomo carved up the remains of Westway yesterday, agreeing to give at least 60 percent of the nearly $2 billion in Federal funds and local grants to mass-transit projects and about $800 million to a new highway between the Battery and West 59th Street. Deputy Mayor Robert Esnard said the highway would carry cars and trucks along the route of West Street and 12th Avenue. He said it probably would resemble Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, the six-lane undulating route along the East River, but would have traffic signals. Earlier yesterday, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, a 10-county agency headed by the Westchester County Executive, Andrew P. O'Rourke, voted at the World Trade Center to withdraw Westway from the Interstate highway system and to submit a package of substitute projects instead. ''That puts the last nail in the coffin of Westway,'' Mr. O'Rourke said.

It is becoming increasingly clear that last Sunday's five-nation accord to work together to lower the dollar was largely aimed at putting pressure on Japan to follow through on past pledges to strengthen the value of the yen. A stronger yen would help cut the United States trade deficit, by making Japanese imports more expensive for Americans to purchase and by making United States goods less expensive in Japan. Japan left the Group of Five meeting with the ''understanding that the major issue is the exchange rate between the dollar and the yen,'' said a senior official at the Bank of Japan. [Monetary officials familiar with the talks also said the strengthening of the yen was a major focus of the meeting. Page D6.] In the past, Japan has pledged certain economic steps that would have the effect of improving America's balance of trade. Japan is believed to have reiterated those pledges at the Group of Five meeting. Also, judging from action in the foreign currency markets over the past four days, Japan apparently said it would intervene heavily by purchasing yen for its central bank.

A senior member of the K.G.B. has defected and is providing information to the West about Soviet espionage operations in Europe and the United States, Reagan Administration officials said today. Some officials said the defector, Vitaly Yurchenko, 50 years old, had also identified several employees of the Central Intelligence Agency as Soviet agents. It was not clear from the accounts whether those reportedly involved were contract employees or full-fledged C.I.A. officers. The defection of Mr. Yurchenko would be the latest in a series of episodes this summer that have rocked intelligence agencies in both the East and the West, including the defection of the K.G.B. station chief in London and the defection to East Germany of the chief West German spy-catcher.

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said today that he had told President Reagan that Canada was interested in negotiating a liberalized trade agreement between the two countries. ''Economics, geography, common sense and the national interest dictate that we try to secure and expand our trade with our closest and largest trading partner,'' the Prime Minister told the House of Commons in a short statement. 'Broadest Possible Package' ''We seek to negotiate the broadest possible package of mutually beneficial reductions in tariff and non-tariff barriers between our two countries,'' Mr. Mulroney said. Canada's leaders have striven in recent years to find a way to guarantee access to the huge United States market. But protectionist sentiment in the United States has been sharply rising, reflected most recently in several speeches by President Reagan intended to blunt even tougher talk in Congress.

Prices of crude oil and oil products, as well as oil-company stocks, rose significantly yesterday on the world markets as Iran, beleaguered by Iraqi bombing attacks, and the Soviet Union, apparently beset by production problems, separately announced a temporary halt to crude-oil exports. In addition, Saudi Arabia said that its state-owned oil company would accept no new customers for two weeks. ''The markets are broiling,'' said Peter C. Beutel, an analyst with Rudolf Wolff Futures Inc., referring to the combination of circumstances. ''In my experience, I've never seen a set of circumstances as bullish as this. Just everything is going right if you want to see prices rise - or wrong if you want to see them fall.''

Hurricane Gloria crashed into the spindly barrier islands of the Outer Banks near Cape Hatteras early today, as the storm pushed northward along the Atlantic Coast, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of residents as far north as New England. As the eye of the storm passed over Buxton, a small town facing Pamlico sound, winds dropped to 35 miles an hour before strengthening again as the storm continued on its track to the north. As the storm closed on the island, winds pushed water toward the western edge of Pamlico Sound, leaving boats in shallow harbors on the eastern edge of the sound resting on sand. Hurricane warnings were posted from Little River Inlet, N.C., to the Merrimack River, north of Boston, as the National Hurricane Center in Miami advised that the center of storm, moving steadily to the north, was likely to be over or just off the New Jersey coast by midday today, and over New England later today. Moving North at 20 M.P.H. The National Weather Service reported that the hurricane, described as one of the most powerful storms to stalk the Atlantic Coast, was moving on a course slightly east of due north at 20 to 25 miles an hour. The risk to the New York City area intensified.

When President Reagan and Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze meet on Friday, they will do so without benefit of the usual prior diplomatic stage-setting. Officials on both sides said the result might be little or no progress in nuclear arms control unless the unusual happens. Fearing that this is so, and trying to turn this prospect around, the Administration seems now to be putting out the word that Mr. Reagan would not respond negatively to new Soviet ideas. The two sides find themselves in this situation, according to officials on both sides, because something critically important did not happen when Secretary of State George P. Shultz talked with Mr. Shevardnadze Wednesday: The two men did not sit down privately, away from their colleagues, as their predecessors had almost invariably done just prior to a session with the President, and say, ''We are thinking about doing this if you do that.'' The Soviet side chose not to show its cards without some idea of what it would get in return. The American side, having already put forward a general proposal in the Geneva talks, felt the next move was Moscow's.

A report in the Finance/New Issues column of Business Day on Wednesday misstated the new, lower debt rating of the Union Camp Corporation. It is AA-.

An article in Metropolitan Report yesterday about a letter written to the Black-Jewish Coalition by Mayor Koch, asking members to speak out against the Rev. Louis Farrakhan and Rabbi Meir Kahane, misstated the Mayor's relationship to the organization. He is not a member.

Because of a mechanical error, a Washington dispatch yesterday on the suspects in the Trans World Airlines hijacking incorrectly referred to the possibility of United States indictments in the case. No indictments are expected to be handed up soon.

International Ottawa has asked Washington to open negotiations for a liberalized trade agreement. Canada's leaders have striven in recent years to find a way to guarantee access to the huge United States market at a time when protectionist sentiment in Washington has been rising sharply. [Page A1, Column 2.] A senior member of the K.G.B. has defected and is providing information to the West about Soviet espionage operations in Europe and the United States, Reagan Administration officials said. They said that Vitaly Yurchenko, 50 years old, had identified several employees of the C.I.A. as Soviet agents. [A1:3-4.]