What was going on when I was born?

The Reagan Administration intends to warn Rumania that it is in jeopardy of losing its benefits in trade with the United States if it does not improve its human rights record, State Department officials said today. They said Secretary of State George P. Shultz, on a visit to Bucharest on Dec. 15, would advise the Rumanians that, unless they met American concerns, it would be difficult if not impossible to extend Rumania's most-favored-nation tariff status. A State Department official said of Mr. Shultz's trip, ''Even though the visit is a short one, I think it is an important one, and perhaps a watershed visit.'' Hungary Also on Itinerary Mr. Shultz will also visit Hungary and Yugoslavia on the trip, which will follow a meeting of foreign ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization next week.

Companies The Navy suspended General Dynamics from getting new Government contracts, acting one day after the company and four former or current executives were indicted on fraud charges. In the last fiscal year, General Dynamics had about $7 billion in revenues from Government contracts. The suspension is the second against the company this year and is considered more serious than the earlier one, which lasted three months and delayed the award of more than $1 billion in contracts. [Page A1.] Sohio is taking a $1.86 billion pretax charge for the fourth quarter as part of a major restructuring. It will write down assets at its Kennecott copper facilities, dispose of copper, coal and shale oil reserves and cancel some oil and gas leases. It is also cutting staff. The company said the cutbacks should contribute $175 million after taxes to 1986 earnings. The stock rose $1.75, to $52.75. [D1.]

A report last Friday in the Briefing column on the Washington Talk page incorrectly identified Josh Darden, a possible Democratic candidate for the House of Represenatives in Virginia's Norfolk district. He is a nephew of former Gov. Colgate W. Darden Jr.

For 207 days of the last 18 months, Andrei D. Sakharov was separated from his wife and was being fed forcibly, his nose clamped shut to force him to open his mouth, relatives said today. And for much of that time, the relatives said, the Soviet authorities tried to conceal Dr. Sakharov's fast by altering or forging messages addressed to friends from the Sakharovs in their place of banishment in Gorky. Dr. Sakharov's last hunger strike, which began April 16, continued with an interruption of two weeks until Oct. 23, when the physicist and rights advocate learned that his wife, Yelena G. Bonner, had been given permission to travel to Italy and to the United States for medical treatment. Account Given by Relatives The information about life in Gorky was supplied in interviews and in a news conference today by Yefrem V. Yankelevich, Miss Bonner's son-in-law, and by Alexei I. Semyonov, her son, both of whom had traveled from their home in Newton, Mass., to Italy to meet her on her arrival from Moscow. They said their account was based on telephone conversations with Dr. Sakharov last month and on facts that had slipped out of Gorky. The information, they said, had been ''clarified'' but not substantively added to by Miss Bonner.

The Senate tonight approved a rescue plan for the financially strained Farm Credit System, the nation's largest agricultural lender. The proposal, passed by a vote of 57 to 34, would reorganize the system's governing body, create a unit to absorb nonperforming loans, and change rules for channeling funds from stronger regional banks into weaker ones. The bill would authorize, but not require, the Secretary of the Treasury to buy loans from the new unit, called the Farm Credit System Capital Corporation. Meanwhile, a House Agriculture subcommittee worked on its version of a similar bill, a task to which it will return Wednesday. That measure is expected to go to the full committee and possibly the House floor this week.

WHATEVER vision is dancing through children's heads this holiday season, it is not likely to be sugarplums, particularly with the range of items available to tempt the imagination sweetly. They include the colorful jack-in-the-box and the unearthly delights of a telescope with a down-to-earth price. Dolls are ever popular, maybe more so if they move to music. For music alone, there are records for young audiences. A festive sweater jacket or velvet dress may enhance holiday pleasures. 1. * Young Stargazers rrThe youngster who is a stargazer can peek into Bloomingdale's for the Tasco 40 X 40 millimeter telescope, which comes with a metal tripod and full-color Rand McNally maps of the moon and outer space. The price is $28, in Young World on the second floor. 2.

New York City housed 8,084 homeless people in its shelters early yesterday, the most in decades, the authorities said. Last night and the night before, the police were deployed to bring 157 of those left on the streets out of the season's first blast of freezing cold. After falling to a low of 27 degrees at 7:30 A.M. - with winds that made it feel 50 degrees colder - the temperature rose to 35 at 12:45 P.M. before starting to fall again, and the city declared a second ''cold weather emergency'' for the homeless. Eighteen people were taken by the police, three of them involuntarily, to city shelters between 6 P.M. and midnight. The night before, the police took 139 to the shelters, four involuntarily.

Many hospitals in the New York metropolitan area, and particularly in the industrial corridor of northern New Jersey, are ill-equipped to treat victims of a major chemical accident, according to a new study and interviews with medical officials. In a telephone survey of 44 major hospitals in seven counties of northern New Jersey, a private research group found that more than half had no formal protocols, or treatment methods, for emergencies from accidents at chemical plants. The study found that most emergency-room personnel had little familiarity with toxic industrial chemicals and that they relied on poison-control centers for help during an accident. National Problem, Too Medical officials in New Jersey and New York City said yesterday such a situation existed in most hospitals in the region, and probably the rest of the nation. The region has the nation's highest concentration of plants using very toxic chemicals, according to an analysis of Federal data last month by The New York Times.

International Winnie Mandela vowed vengeance for the blood of fallen South African blacks at what she said was the first mass rally she had addressed in 25 years. Mrs. Mandela, an anti-apartheid activist who is the wife of the imprisoned nationalist leader Nelson Mandela, broke an officially imposed silence shortly after a mass funeral for 12 people slain by the police in a black township. [Page A1, Column 6.] Robert C. McFarlane is leaving the Reagan Administration, White House officials said. They said the Administration was actively seeking a replacement for Mr. McFarlane, who has been the White House national security adviser since 1983. [A1:2.]

Blood tests on two state troopers killed when their patrol car crashed into a truck two weeks ago found that the trooper who was driving was legally intoxicated and the other had traces of cocaine in his body, the Westchester County Medical Examiner said today. After the test results were disclosed by the Medical Examiner, Dr. Millard Hyland, the state police announced in Albany that they had begun an investigation of the accident and the possible source of the cocaine. A spokesman for the state police, Lieut. Michael Wright, said the trooper found to have alcohol in his blood, William A. Baker, 42 years old, had been in an alcoholism treatment program for state troopers in 1983 and early 1984 and had been restored to active duty sometime last year.

Winnie Mandela, breaking an officially imposed silence, pledged vengeance today for the blood of fallen blacks at what she said was the first mass rally she had addressed in 25 years. Mrs. Mandela, an anti-apartheid activist and the wife of the black leader Nelson Mandela, spoke from a platform in a soccer stadium shortly after 12 out of 15 people slain by the police here on Nov. 21 were buried in a mass funeral. ''This is our country,'' Mrs. Mandela said. ''In the same way as you have had to bury our children today, so shall the blood of these heroes we buried today be avenged.''

The Government's most closely watched barometer of future economic performance rose three-tenths of 1 percent in October, the sixth consecutive monthly advance, the Commerce Department reported today. Although the rise was less robust than those of July, August or September, analysts were somewhat encouraged by the latest data and said they might indicate some modest pickup in economic activity. ''It looks like things might be coming into place for expanding growth for the months ahead,'' said Michael P. Daly, an economist for the Cigna Corporation, a major insurer.