What was going on when I was born?

The Sports World Specials column on Monday incorrectly reported Benson Huggard's accomplishment last month. Mr. Huggard, who had set out to swim once around Manhattan on each of eight consecutive days with his legs tied, completed the act on only four of those days. On the other occasions, the swims were completed by other members of his team.

International Cruise ship hijackers reiterated their vow to kill the passengers and crew of the Italian vessel unless Israel freed 50 Palestinian prisoners. The standoff came amid unconfirmed reports that the terrorists may have slain some of the more than 400 hostages. The cruise liner, the Achille Lauro, continued to steam through the eastern Mediterranean with no apparent destination. [Page A1, Columns 5-6.] The U.S. seeks to deny the hijackers of the Italian cruise liner a sanctuary in any port, according to senior Reagan Administration officials. As part of the effort, they said, Washington, in diplomatic messages, has urged Syria and other Mediterranean countries not to allow the Achille Lauro to dock. [A1:5.]

The Reagan Administration will nominate James L. Buckley to the United States Court of Appeals, but officials have changed their minds about which circuit court the former New York Senator would sit on, Administration officials said today. Mr. Buckley, a conservative Republican, will not be nominated to the Court of Appeals in New York, as had been planned, the officials said. Instead, he will be nominated to the appeals court for the District of Columbia circuit. Word from the Administration a few weeks ago that Mr. Buckley might be nominated to the New York court had stirred opposition from the New York City Bar Association, which said he had failed to prove his qualifications, and from Senator Lowell P. Weicker, Republican of Connecticut, who had told the Administration privately of his opposition.

As Treasury Secretary James A. Baker 3d returned to Washington, bankers reacted cautiously today to his third world lending plan. The Baker plan is aimed at pumping an additional $29 billion into debtor countries over the next three years. Mr. Baker outlined the plan in a speech today before the joint annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. It calls for an additional $20 billion in lending by commercial banks, an annual increase of 2 1/2 percent, and a $9 billion increase in lending by the World Bank and other multilateral institutions to the largest debtor nations over the next three years. The conference hall was packed as Mr. Baker introduced the plan in a speech that had the title of ''Program for Sustained Growth.'' He received polite, tepid applause at the end of the address. Nearly 10,000 government financial officials and bankers from 149 member countries of the two institutions are attending the meeting in the South Korean capital.

''Please, please, please, don't try anything.'' - Gerardo de Rosa, captain of the Achille Lauro. [A1:6.]

CALL them 914 wines. Call some of the couples who grow grapes and run the wineries part-timers. Call the drive to visit them fast and easy. And call the dog that dashes around Louis J. Fiore's West Park Vineyards this way: ''Here, Rhine!'' Next year, Mr. Fiore says, Rhine is ''marrying'' a dog named Moselle. Just north of New York City, 21 federally licensed wineries are also married - to a river. Nineteen, east and west of the Hudson in Dutchess, Ulster, Orange, Rockland and Westchester Counties, are reached by dialing the 914 area code. When the phone rings, it may be answered in a winery that is also the cellar of a house. Or out back in a garage-size winery. Or in a converted barn in which new stainless-steel storage and fermentation tanks soar skyward.

There are 11 of them in the group, devoted friends from New York and New Jersey who for many years have spent weekends together at the Jersey shore. ''We call them the beach people,'' said 34-year-old Lisa Klinghoffer, whose parents, Marilyn and Leon Klinghoffer of Manhattan, are members of the group and now hostages aboard a cruise ship in the Mediterranean. This fall the Klinghoffers and their friends - men and women in their 60's and 70's, several of them in frail health - booked a cruise aboard the Italian ship Achille Lauro. But through a quirk of fate involving a simple decision to take a sightseeing excursion in Egypt or to remain on board, the 11 have been separated. Five are safe in Cairo. Six, including the Klinghoffers, are among the 413 people estimated to be held by Palestinian hijackers aboard the Achille Lauro.

The House of Representatives tonight overwhelmingly adopted a new farm bill that would cost $141 billion over the next five years. Most of the money would go toward propping up prices paid to farmers and feeding the nation's poor through the food stamp program. The vote was 282 to 141 in an unusually bipartisan vote. The majority included 184 Democrats and 98 Republicans; 62 Democrats and 79 Republicans opposed the bill.

A Dutch oil trader could soon be one of the biggest gasoline dealers in the East. The dealer, John Deuss, recently completed the purchase of the Atlantic Richfield Company's oil refinery here. Now he intends to bid on the other sprawling refinery at the mouth of the city's Schuylkill, the Gulf Oil plant that was put on the block in early September by Gulf's parent, the Chevron Corporation. The sale of the Arco refinery and Chevron's decision to solicit bids -and the sudden emergence of Mr. Deuss as an important new force in the region - are only the latest developments in what many analysts describe as a shakeout in the East Coast refining industry, which is concentrated in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Surplus in Sluggish Market Eastern refiners have been pressed by a worldwide excess of gasoline, heating oil and other refined products, a widening flow of imports and a sluggish consumer market. Some have responded by cutting back, and others have even abandoned the nation's most populous region. But further changes seem certain, analysts say.

An article and a headline in Business Day on Sept. 25 about Steven P. Jobs, former chairman of Apple Computer, erroneously punctuated a description of Mr. Jobs's reaction to a suit filed against him by Apple. He expressed shock but did not use the word and it should not have appeared in quotation marks.

Gianfranco Ferre's spring and summer fashion show had been under way for some time when a samurai warrior appeared alone, made some passes with his sword, then slashed the curtain with it, from stage right to stage left. The entire lower portion of the canvas fell away. Standing right behind it were 50 models, neat in navy, red and white outfits. The applause started up, gaining momentum as each model walked down the runway, albeit rapidly, then followed by the designer, wearing a navy blue suit. Everyone is now talking about the electrifying finale and is wondering whether anyone will devise a way to top it. It is not necessarily bad news for fashion that a bit of stagecraft has overshadowed the clothes. The clothes here are becoming less overblown and more realistic. Some trends are being established for the next fashion season, but they are not the provocative sort that cause protest or alarm. Collarless suit jackets are frequently worn without blouses. Bermuda shorts and culottes alternate with short skirts and long pants. Low-heeled shoes enable the models to walk with an effortless swing.

Hundreds of people apparently died in a mud slide that buried a hillside shantytown north of this city Monday after a three-day rainstorm, the authorities said today. Gov. Rafael Hernandez Colon called it the ''worst tragedy to ever strike the island.'' He proclaimed a state of emergency. By evening, rescue workers had uncovered 29 bodies from the claylike muddy earth that sealed the crumpled community of Mameyes.