What was going on when I was born?

Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Company, the New York investment house, said yesterday that it was raising its offer to buy the big Chicago food producer, Beatrice Companies, to $47 a share, or $5.8 billion. Beatrice directors, who had previously scheduled a board meeting for Thursday, were given a deadline of the close of business the same day to respond.

A CACHE of more than a dozen bottles of wine thought to have belonged to Thomas Jefferson, a connoisseur of fine Bordeaux, has been found in Paris. One, a Chateau Lafite vintage-dated 1787, is to be auctioned in London on Dec. 5. Two others, 1784 and 1787 Chateau d'Yquem, have been drunk. Michael Broadbent, wine director of Christie's, reached in London, said: ''It will be the oldest authenticated vintage-dated Bordeaux Christie's has ever sold. Even at Chateau Lafite, they don't have any. The oldest in their cellar is 1797.'' The bottle is expected to sell for ''well in excess of L10,000'' - about $14,000 at a recent exchange rate.

Worldwide concern over the ups and downs of the American dollar and its impact on the livelihood of all countries has set in motion a multinational effort to reimpose some form of government control over currencies, according to international economists. The catalyst for change could well be a monetary conference here next month to be attended by many of the world's top economic policy makers, leading international economists and senior members of the Reagan Administration. From that meeting will come a report for the seven-nation economic summit conference to be held late next spring in Tokyo. That, in turn, could lead to the first international conference devoted to currency revisions since Bretton Woods in 1944.

BY late morning the Pavillion Agency on East 40th Street is crowded with women seeking positions as nannies, housekeepers and live-in companions. Waiting, filling out forms, they confer quietly in the accents of such places as Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad. Many of the women are in the United States on visitors' visas that explicitly forbid them to work. But the employment agency has no trouble placing them, for housekeepers are in short supply and, under Federal law, placing or employing an illegal worker carries no penalty. The situation for the housekeeper is precarious. It is balanced, experts say, only by the laxity of immigration law enforcement. Few if any of the thousands of housekeepers thought to be working in this country without ''green cards,'' which permit employment, have been threatened with deportation, though officials of the Immigration and Naturalization Service say that all could be deported. Officials are ''turning their faces the other way,'' said Sidney Elfman, a Manhattan immigration lawyer. ''It's a humane policy,'' he added. Still, employers, employees and labor experts all voice misgivings about the ''gray market'' in household service, saying that it encourages exploitation on both sides. ''There's a semi-underground economy in this area,'' said Charles Smith, associate editor of Interpreter Releases, an immigration law newsletter.

The Secretary of the Navy tonight sharply criticized the Justice Department's decision to arrange a plea bargain with John A. Walker Jr., saying the information Mr. Walker could provide about his spying for the Soviet Union would be of little value to the Government. The comments by the Navy Secretary, John F. Lehman Jr., directly contradicted what the Government said in court Monday was its main reason for striking a deal with Mr. Walker.

Note and bond prices rose sharply yesterday, as the long-awaited sale of new Treasury issues this week attracted many investors who had been on the sidelines since the previous major Treasury financing in early August. At yesterday's auction of $6.75 billion of new four-year Treasury notes - the first of a three-part $17.75 billion financing - investor and speculative demand was strong enough that the 9 3/8 percent notes sold at an average yield of 9.47 percent, down from 9.6 percent in the previous day's trading. The average yield was the lowest since the auction of June 1980, and was well below the 9.72 percent yield at the previous four-year sale on June 25.

Because of a mechanical error, one line was omitted from the fifth paragraph of an article in Science Times yesterday about the relation between emotions and health. The paragraph should have read: ''Opponents of the editorial's view also point to a major article that appeared the next month in an equally respected publication, The Lancet, the British medical journal. The article reviewed studies linking psychological factors and disease and concluded, in contrast to The New England Journal's editorial, that counseling and psychological support may be as important as many medical measures.''

A four-day extravaganza of concerts, tall ships, ethnic festivals and fireworks will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty the next Fourth of July weekend, the sponsors of the festivities announced yesterday. The celebration will begin July 3, with a lighting ceremony conducted by President Reagan from the carrier John F. Kennedy in the harbor.

An admitted Mafia member who turned informer testified yesterday about the strict rules, sacred oath and deadly punishment imposed by the secretive organization. Jurors and spectators leaned forward in tense anticipation as the key witness, Tommaso Buscetta, began testifying in the ''pizza connection'' narcotics trial in a crowded courtroom of Federal District Court in Manhattan.

The Chicago Pacific Corporation signed a definitive agreement yesterday to acquire the Hoover Company, the 90-year-old concern whose name has become synonymous with vacuum cleaners, in a deal worth about $550 million.

Claude Montana was hot. Elisabeth de Senneville was not. But at both fashion shows recently, hordes of designers, buyers, retailers, agents, spectators and journalists gently pushed and jostled their way into gigantic tents in the Tuileries Gardens to view what the world's most celebrated names in fashion hope women will be wearing next spring.

Japan is a wealthy nation whose citizens do not enjoy many of the amenities of wealth. Only 34 percent of Japanese communities have modern sewer systems, compared with 97 percent in Britain and 85 percent in the United States. Just 51 percent of Japanese roads were paved as of 1982, compared with 1981 figures of 96.4 percent in Britain and 85 percent in the United States. And the average size of homes built in Japan in 1983 was 932 square feet compared with 1,450 square feet last year in the United States.