What was going on when I was born?

The Philip Morris Companies, the nation's biggest cigarette maker, has agreed to buy the General Foods Corporation, one of the country's biggest food producers, the two companies announced yesterday. Philip Morris will pay General Foods' stockholders almost $5.8 billion in cash, making the merger the costliest in history outside the oil business. The combination is the latest in a succession of food-company acquisitions: The lure, as consumers become increasingly eager for convenience foods, is established brand names. General Foods, for example, makes Jell-O, Maxwell House coffee and Birds Eye frozen foods. The trend also reflects the desire of tobacco companies to diversify into other consumer products because of the pressures that health questions are putting on their cigarette business.

Hurricane Gloria charged up the Atlantic seaboard yesterday and slammed into the New York metropolitan region with pounding winds and heavy rains. Long Island and Connecticut bore the brunt, but most of the region appeared to take the awesome storm in stride. The hurricane - 300 miles of churning spiral arms that hurled winds up to 130 miles an hour - drove 280,000 residents from coastal areas, including 100,000 on Long Island and 95,000 in New Jersey; killed three people; knocked out power to at least 1.7 million homes, and disrupted the lives of millions of residents from North Carolina to New England. Downgraded to 'Storm' But at 8 P.M., the National Weather Service downgraded the hurricane to a tropical storm when its winds fell to 50 miles an hour over New England. At midnight, the storm was at the northern tip of Maine.

''Scary,'' Cheryl Gagliano said yesterday in Hampton Bays, L.I., where the wind was howling, the trees were whipping back and forth and all the shades in the house had been pulled down - except the one for peeping out. ''My husband was just wondering if the roof might go.'' The roof did not go, Mrs. Gagliano said later, but the basketball hoop did. In other areas, however, preparing for Hurricane Gloria was like the storm before the calm, as the metropolitan area battened down its hatches, taped its windows, evacuated its beachfronts and prepared for what forecasters had been calling ''possibly the worst hurricane of the century.'' In parts of New York City and some suburban areas, the preparations proved far more dramatic than the hurricane itself, which roared through quickly, followed by incongruous blue skies.

The Soviet Foreign Minister met with President Reagan today and was reported to have proposed a 50 percent reduction in the offensive nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union. A Reagan Administration official said the minister, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, had outlined a formal Soviet negotiating plan after giving Mr. Reagan a long letter from the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev. First Clear Indication Today's developments were the first clear indication that the Soviet Union would offer a comprehensive plan to reduce offensive weapons since the Geneva arms talks resumed in March after 15-month hiatus. The Administration has repeatedly attributed the impasse in Geneva to Moscow's failure to submit such a plan. Mr. Reagan and Mr. Shevardnadze conferred for two hours in the Oval Office, then met for an hour over lunch in the State Dining Room.

Hurricane Gloria's path along the Northeast coast was destructive to property, but lives were spared in part because technological advances provided a picture of the storm's every movement in plenty of time for residents to take adequate precautions. If the forecasters seemed to have gone too far in predicting the power of Gloria, that was, in some measure, a matter of perception, because its fury swept some areas and spared others. But it was also a matter of reality. The storm was in fact slightly less powerful than expected, reflecting deficiencies in the ability to predict a storm's path despite great strides in satellite and radar observation of these huge atmospheric disturbances.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced today that American Airlines had been fined $1.5 million for violating Federal regulations on aircraft safety maintenance and inspection. The agency said none of the deficiencies had caused any injuries or deaths. The fine, which has been paid by American, was the largest imposed by the Federal air safety agency against a commercial airline. It stemmed from an extensive audit of American's maintenance records last summer.

Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez said today that he was confident his fellow Spaniards would vote to remain in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in a nationwide referendum scheduled for early next year. But, in a speech during an unofficial visit here, Mr. Gonzalez suggested that Spain's long-range military priorities would be upgrading its armed forces and modifying existing agreements with the United States. Mr. Gonzalez spoke at a luncheon of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution. He noted that he and his Spanish Workers' Socialist Party had initially opposed Spain's entry into the Atlantic alliance. But he said that was because the country had not been consulted by the previous Government, which brought Spain into NATO.

Fanie Goduka, 11 years old, dreamed the other night that he was still locked in a prison cell that echoed with his screams of fear. The nightmare reflects what to Fanie has been a bitter reality. Before he was released recently on bail, the pencil-thin child spent 57 days in jail, charged with ''public violence.'' He did not understand the words, and asked the 13 adults sharing his cell what they meant. The men told him he was being held for throwing stones. He still could not understand. According to Fanie, he was walking home from school in the township of Alexandra outside Johannesburg when there was a sudden downpour. He sought shelter in a shack, he said, and a white policeman who was passing by arrested him.

The South African Army today started what it called a campaign to win the hearts and minds of black township residents, building a soccer field in Tembisa, a segregated area north of here. At the same time, Defense Minister Magnus Malan, in an interview with a South African newspaper, said he would send his forces into Angola ''as often as it is necessary'' to prevent a buildup there of the insurgent South-West Africa People's Organization. In Durban, the police said three bombs exploded in white-owned stores, but no one was hurt. A fourth bomb was found and defused. No one immediately took responsibility for the blasts, and the motive for the bombings were unclear.

Prime Minister Nikolai A. Tikhonov, at 80 the oldest member of the Soviet leadership, retired today and was replaced by Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, one of the new younger generation of Soviet leaders. The official announcement said Mr. Tikhonov had asked to be relieved of his duties because his health had ''considerably deteriorated.'' His attendance had been reported at only one official function since early July, and there were unconfirmed reports that he had become partly paralyzed. Mr. Tikhonov's replacement by Mr. Ryzhkov, who turns 56 on Saturday, had been widely anticipated here, although the timing came as something of a surprise to diplomats. Most had not expected the shift before the next session of the Supreme Soviet, the nominal Parliament, at the earliest.

Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, who was appointed Soviet Prime Minister today, is an engineer and industrial manager by training, not a Communist Party official. In his new job as head of the Soviet Government, or chairman of the Council of Ministers, he will have the main responsibility for instituting the economic changes outlined by the man thought to be his mentor, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader. Mr. Ryzhkov, who will turn 56 on Saturday, represents the new generation of well-educated, professionally trained managers who began to climb when Yuri V. Andropov was Soviet leader, and have been promoted to top positions by Mr. Gorbachev.

The Soviet proposal reportedly made to President Reagan today seems likely to break the six-month logjam in the Soviet-American arms negotiations in Geneva and to open the way to more intensive preparations leading up to the President's meeting in November with Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Both Administration officials and some members of Congress, informed by the Russians on their proposals, called today's move a significant and positive step that would ''put us in a new ball game,'' as one Administration official put it. ''At least now we can have a real negotiation,'' this official said. Neither Secretary of State George P. Shultz nor a Soviet spokesman would spell out the specifics of the proposal relayed to President Reagan by the Soviet Foreign Minister, Eduard A. Shevardnadze. But later, an American official said it called for a 50 percent cutback in offensive arsenals, even more than had been anticipated.