What was going on when I was born?

Tokyo was rocked Friday night by its most severe earthquake in 62 years, a sudden jolt that halted trains and caused skyscrapers to sway. There were no reported deaths and only a few injuries. Property damage was mild. But even in this city, which is accustomed to seismic rumblings on a regular basis, the earthquake frightened many residents, especially because it closely followed the recent disaster in Mexico.

President Francois Mitterrand, appearing at a news conference with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, today rejected the Soviet leader's proposal for separate arms negotiations with France. On Thursday, Mr. Gorbachev offered a ''separate agreement'' on nuclear arms with France as well as with Britain, saying, ''It is time to start between us a direct dialogue.'' He made the proposal in conjunction with his formal presentation of the Soviet Union's arms offer to the United States. In London, the Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, said any such direct negotiations with Moscow could only follow a strategic arms agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States. An Animated Speaker The quick rejections from France and Britain came as Mr. Gorbachev, appearing with the French leader at Elysee Palace, became the first Soviet leader since Nikita S. Khrushchev 25 years ago to submit himself directly to the massed world press.

Senators critical of a proposal to balance the Federal budget by 1991 blocked a vote on the plan today as members of Congress were torn between its political attraction and its possible flaws, both constitutional and fiscal. Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas, the Senate majority leader, scheduled unusual Saturday and Sunday sessions in the hope of breaking the impasse. The pressure for quick action arises from the fact that the budget-balancing plan is being offered as an amendment to a bill to raise the Government's debt ceiling to more than $2,000 billion. The Treasury Department says the debt will reach its present ceiling of $1,824 billion on Monday, raising the possibility of the Government's delaying payment of some of its bills or benefit checks until more cash comes in.

The Soviet leadership's new arms-control proposals have produced somewhat contradictory responses from the Reagan Administration, which seems pleased to have the proposals but unhappy with much of their content. So far, no single, coherent statement of policy has emerged from the Administration about the highly publicized visit of Mikhail S. Gorbachev to Paris, where he has been trying to generate support in Western Europe for the various Soviet proposals. Although some White House officials expressed concern in the past about ''the public relations war,'' the attitude of officials who were interviewed today seemed fairly relaxed. To some extent the reactions are following familiar lines.

The Soviet Union today evacuated nonessential staff members and families of diplomats from its embassy in Moslem West Beirut. Four embassy men were kidnapped on Monday and one was subsquently murdered, and the professed kidnappers have threatened to destroy the Soviet Embassy if all Russians did not leave the Moslem sector of the city by today. A Soviet Embassy source said the embassy would not be closed.

The Security Council tonight condemned Israel's raid on the Palestine Liberation Organization's headquarters in Tunisia. The United States abstained in the 14-to-0 vote. The Council avoided a United States veto, according to Western and Arab delegates, by changing an outright denunciation of Israel to a condemnation of its ''act of armed aggression'' in Tuesday's raid, and by eliminating a reference to the victims as ''Tunisian and Palestinian civilians.'' In carefully crafted remarks, the United States delegate, Lieut. Gen. Vernon A. Walters, said the United States could not support the resolution because it was one-sided. But he gave no specific explanation for the decision not to veto the measure.

Edward L. Howard, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, traveled to Austria in 1984 and sold Soviet intelligence agents highly secret information about American intelligence sources and methods, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The specifics of espionage charges against Mr. Howard, who disappeared from his job as a state financial analyst here two weeks ago, were contained in an affidavit filed Wednesday in Federal District Court in Albuquerque, N.M., but sealed at the request of the Government until today. 'Enormous' Damage Charged One intelligence source in Washington said tonight that the information provided by Mr. Howard had caused ''enormous'' damage to American intelligence-gathering in Moscow. He said that some Russian operatives for the C.I.A. were thought to have been executed by the Russians after their identities were revealed through the data Mr. Howard provided. In one of two affidavits made available today as part of an amended Federal espionage complaint against Mr. Howard, originally filed Sept. 23, the F.B.I. said that the origin of its information was ''a confidential source with intimate knowledge of Soviet intelligence matters.''

Dr. Elliot M. Gross, the city's Chief Medical Examiner, testified yesterday that he has changed his opinion again on the cause of Michael Stewart's death and that he no longer supports his final autopsy report. It was his second revision in the case. His first autopsy report, made public in September 1983, said that the cause of Mr. Stewart's death had been cardiac arrest and that no physical injury had led to the death. In November 1983, he revised that finding and attributed the death, in his final autopsy report, to ''physical injury of the spinal cord.''

The President of Albania delivered a long speech on domestic and foreign policy recently, and hardly anyone outside the country noticed. Hardly anyone, that is, except the world's small band of Albania watchers. They noted that the speech, titled ''Albania Will Always Advance on the Road to Socialism,'' included some fresh nuances on the isolated Eastern European nation's attitude toward other countries. But the speech Aug. 26 by the President, Ramiz Alia, acquired the authority of a weighty policy statement last month when it was distributed in translation by Albanian diplomatic missions around the world, complete with a slick cover and a photograph of Mr. Alia, who is 59 years old, in front of microphones. The edition made available in the United States was sent out by the Albanian Mission to the United Nations in New York.

The Lebanese authorities began an investigation today to try to verify an assertion by the underground group Islamic Holy War that it had killed William Buckley, one of six Americans it said it was holding hostage. The state radio said that although the police had little to go on, a full investigation had been ordered by senior Government officials. By nightfall there was no sign of the body of Mr. Buckley, the 57-year-old political officer of the American Embassy in Beirut, who was kidnapped on March 16, 1984. Nor was there any other sign that he had been killed.

A Bulgarian airline official accused of being an accomplice of the Turk who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981 had his days in court this week, and he denied having anything to do with the attempt on the Pope's life. The official, Sergei I. Antonov, the former head of the Rome office of the Government-run Bulgarian airline, was accused by Mehmet Ali Agca, the convicted assailant, of having helped plan and carry out the plot. When he took the stand Wednesday for the first of two days of testimony, Mr. Antonov trembled, stared blankly and clasped his hands nervously, prompting the chief judge, Severino Santiapichi, to inquire whether he needed time to calm down.

Bermuda adopted economic sanctions against South Africa today and called for the elimination of apartheid. Prime Minister John Swan announced the sanctions after months of protests by local anti-apartheid groups that had urged the Government of this British colony to sever all links with South Africa. The sanctions banned all commercial imports from South Africa including the sale of gold krugerrands. Mr. Swan also reiterated Bermuda's policy of not investing in South African companies.