What was going on when I was born?

According to uncontested testimony, on July 21 at 7:19 A.M., Cheektowaga Patrolman Ken Rusin spotted the Town Supervisor, Daniel Weber, driving north on Union Road, not wearing a seat belt. The patrolman pulled the town official over. ''He looked at me,'' Patrolman Rusin recalled, ''and asked if I knew who he was.'' The patrolman knew. The Supervisor signs the patrolman's paychecks.

ALONG with the baseball playoffs, football and the new season's television situation comedies, starting this weekend nature is offering its own season special - the annual spectacular display of fall foliage sweeping down from the north toward metropolitan New York. The show is open to all willing to make a day trip north, but the closing notices are implicit in the chill of the morning air. The foliage will be approaching its peak this weekend and next, but as October draws to a close, so will the spectacle. By car, train or even bicycle, you can combine a trip to view the turning colors with a sampling of the region's arts and crafts. Suggested below are a dozen such one-day combination trips where you can see a play, attend a fair, pick apples, watch artists at work or even buy or sell skis for the winter ahead.

The four Palestinians aboard the Achille Lauro intended to stay aboard as passengers until the cruise liner reached Ashdod, Israel, and then planned either to shoot up the harbor or take Israelis hostage, according to Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab informants. The Israelis were to be held to bargain for the release of 50 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. The leader of the faction that ordered the operation, Mohammed Abbas, also known as Abul Abbas, is a close associate of Yasir Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and was reportedly sent by Mr. Arafat to deal with the hijackers after their original plan to infiltrate Israel at Ashdod had gone awry. Crew Discovered Arms Cache According to the informants, the four members of the group aborted their plans and seized the ship when their weapons were discovered by the crew after the Achille Lauro had left Alexandria on Monday. The informants say the original plan and the hijacking were part of a bungled attempt to exact revenge for Israel's raid last week on the P.L.O. headquarters near Tunis.

FROM a demographic viewpoint, the Caribbean basin might well extend north to New York City. With its well-defined, self-conscious communities of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Trinidadians, Haitians, Jamaicans, Cubans and others, the city is firmly tied to the islands, by culture if not by climate. One organization that is working to strengthen the city's Caribbean identification - and to emphasize the unity-in-diversity of its many groups - is the Caribbean Cultural Center. The center sponsors a festival, called Expressions, in celebration of Afro-Caribbean culture, or what it terms the African diaspora. Expressions '85, the seventh annual festival, will focus on two sets of pan-Caribbean concerts, at Hunter College Auditorium this weekend and at Avery Fisher Hall next weekend. The shows offer an array of dance steps and carnival costumes - related and individualized - as well as all manner of African-derived, European-developed and pan-American-adapted rhythms and melodies.

Reagan Administration officials and legislators reacted exuberantly tonight to the news that American warplanes had seized the four hijackers who apparently killed an elderly American aboard an Italian cruise ship. ''Thank God we've won one,'' said Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York. The comment summed up the mood in this startled capital after years of witnessing the Carter and Reagan administrations struggling in vain to cope with Middle East terrorism and attacks against the United States. Iran Crisis Recalled Officials pointed out that it was nearly six years ago that Iranian revolutionaries seized the United States Embassy in Teheran and virtually made a hostage of the Carter Administration. Mr. Carter found himself unable to fulfill his threats against terrorists and, in the case of a military raid to rescue the Americans held hostage in Iran, failed in a humiliating manner.

The Central Intelligence Agency failed to notify the Federal Bureau of Investigation after it learned more than a year ago that Edward L. Howard was considering becoming a Soviet spy, Government officials said today. According to court records, Mr. Howard told two agency employees in September 1984 that he was thinking of disclosing classified information to the Soviet Union. Law Calls For Reporting The bureau has sole responsibility for domestic espionage investigations and, under Federal law, the intelligence agency and all other Government agencies are supposed to report suspected espionage to the F.B.I. It is illegal for the C.I.A. or any other Federal agency to carry out surveillance or other actions within the United States to stop potential spies. Mr. Howard, 33 years old, a former intelligence agency officer who is now a fugitive, has been charged with espionage, accused of giving Soviet officials details of American intelligence operations in Moscow. Federal officials have called the disclosures serious and damaging.

For the management of the Jack Eckerd Corporation, the last few months have been spent either actively warding off takeover efforts or conceiving strategies to discourage any potential suitors. Now, it has taken a step that its managers hope will put those matters behind it. Eckerd, the nation's third-largest drugstore chain, said yesterday that it had agreed to be purchased by an investment group that includes members of management in a leveraged buyout for about $1.18 billion. The transaction is considered the largest in the drugstore industry.

While Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, was still alive, he made sure that his company kept ''one foot in industry and the other in the soil.'' Today, true to tradition, Ford Motor planted its foot deeper into the soil by acquiring the New Holland farm equipment operation from the Sperry Corporation. Ford said it would pay $330 million in cash for the division, and assume $110 million in liabilities, a total price that analysts said was about 50 percent of the book value of the division. New Holland produces haying and harvesting equipment, including combines. The business will be joined with that of Ford Tractor, a maker of small and medium-size tractors.

Orson Welles, the Hollywood ''boy wonder'' who created the film classic ''Citizen Kane,'' scared tens of thousands of Americans with a realistic radio report of a Martian invasion of New Jersey and changed the face of film and theater with his daring new ideas, died yesterday in Los Angeles, apparently of a heart attack. He was 70 years old and lived in Las Vegas, Nev. An assistant coroner in Los Angeles, Donald Messerle, said Welles's death ''appears to be natural in origin.'' He had been under treatment for diabetes as well as a heart ailment, his physician reported. Welles's body was found by his chauffeur. Despite the feeling of many that his career - which evoked almost constant controversy over its 50 years -was one of largely unfulfilled promise, Welles eventually won the respect of his colleagues. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Film Institute in 1975, and last year the Directors Guild of America gave him its highest honor, the D. W. Griffith Award.

''The hijackers pushed him in his chair and dragged him to the side of the boat where - in cold blood - they fired a shot to the forehead.

Friday Barnard Film Festival Several critically acclaimed films and their creators are on the agenda for Barnard College's ninth annual film and video festival, ''Works by Women,'' which begins today. The first showing, a video program that will be screened at 1 P.M. in the Media Room at Barnard Library, features ''Tongues,'' a collaborative performance piece by Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikin. It was directed by Shirley Clarke, who will be present for a discussion. The program also includes Nan Hoover's ''Color Pieces,'' ''A Nation Uprooted: Afghan Refugees in Pakistan'' by Judith Mann and Debra Denker, and Anita Thacher's ''Breakfast Table.'' At 3:30 P.M. in the Lehman Auditorium of Altschul Hall, there will be a screening of ''Small Happiness: Women of a Chinese Village,'' by Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon.

An Egyptian plane carrying the hijackers of an Italian cruise ship was intercepted by American Navy jets as it flew toward Tunisia Thursday night and was forced to land in Italy, the White House announced. A spokesman said the four terrorists had been taken into custody by Italian authorities. In a late evening news conference, Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said President Reagan had ordered the dramatic military action after learning that Egypt had turned down repeated American pleas to prosecute the four gunmen and was flying them to freedom. The hijackers are believed to have killed an elderly American tourist aboard the cruise ship. No Shots Fired The United States intends to seek ''the prompt extradition'' of the hijackers from Italy, Mr. Speakes said. Later, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said the United States hoped the Italians would waive their right to try the hijackers and would allow them to be prosecuted in the United States.