What was going on when I was born?

A picture caption and an article on Oct. 31 about the collaboration between the singer Al Green and Willie Mitchell, a pop record producer, misidentified an automobile owned by Mr. Mitchell. It was a 1950 Chevrolet.

The Aluminum Company of America said yesterday that it would take an after-tax charge against earnings of $175 million in the current quarter to permanently shut a fourth of its production capacity. The charge will result in a loss for the quarter, if not the year. In last year's fourth quarter, Alcoa reported a loss of $14.7 million, including nonrecurring charges.

International Five Argentine ex-military leaders were convicted by a civilian court of crimes committed during a campaign against leftist urban guerrillas in the 1970's in which more than 9,000 people disappeared. Two of the five -Gen. Jorge Videla and Adm. Emilio Massera - were given life sentences, and four other former military leaders were acquitted. [Page A1, Col. 6.] A dispute over a Nobel Peace Prize clouded the eve of the scheduled award presentation ceremony in Oslo. It became known belatedly that one founder of the group being honored, Dr. Yevgeny I. Charoz, signed a joint letter in 1973 denouncing Andrei D. Sakharov. [A1:4-5.]

For a modest $170,000, Robinson's offers a specially tailored Christmas gift: a first-class flight to Leningrad and a week's stay while Russian furriers design your own sable fur coat. The gift is hardly selling like Cabbage Patch dolls. No matter, for it is intended not so much to sell as to cultivate a chic image, to set Robinson's a bit apart in one of the country's great retailing wars. ''Hopefully, it makes us different,'' said Michael Gould, the chairman of Robinson's. Such ammunition is particularly useful this Christmas season in Los Angeles, which pits Robinson's against the Broadway, Bullock's and the May Company in one of the toughest retail markets in the country.

The threat by OPEC oil ministers to wage a price war to protect a fixed share of the world market reverberated through the commodity and stock exchanges yesterday. Prices of crude oil and petroleum products fell sharply in worldwide trading. The stocks of oil companies also slumped on the New York Stock Exchange. Investor optimism that a decline in crude oil prices would lead to lower inflation led to strong advances elsewhere in the stock market and in the bond market. Conversely, prices of gold and silver, which are both traded as hedges against inflation, fell noticeably. And the dollar rose against most currencies, while the pound, which is very sensitive to oil-price fluctuations because of Britain's North Sea holdings, declined.

Mayor Koch yesterday named Robert F. Wagner Jr., his unsuccessful choice for Schools Chancellor three years ago, to serve on the Board of Education. The appointment was seen by many public officials as a preliminary step toward Mr. Wagner's becoming president of the seven-member board, which would give him a leading role in making school policy. ''I certainly think he would make one of the best presidents,'' the Mayor said at a news conference in his office with the 41-year-old Mr. Wagner. Mr. Koch added that the decision would not be his, since board presidents are selected by the seven members of the board each spring. That selection is a political one, however, and Mr. Koch has always managed to prevail on key issues before the board.

The troubled Union Carbide Corporation has become the latest target in Wall Street's series of takeover battles. After months of rumors, yesterday the GAF Corporation announced a $4.3 billion offer to acquire the chemical company, which is far larger than GAF. Union Carbide declined to say how it would react. ''We are aware of GAF's proposal, and we will respond at an appropriate time,'' the company said in a statement issued by its public relations staff at corporate headquarters in Danbury, Conn. On Wall Street, however, the betting was that Carbide's best hope would be to try to take over GAF instead, a maneuver that marked the fierce Bendix-Allied takeover battle in 1983. Reflecting this assessment, GAF's shares rose $10 yesterday to close at $57.625, defying a pattern that normally sees the stocks of prospective acquirers decline. Carbide's stock also climbed, ending the day at $66.375, up $3.375.

A dispatch from Cambridge, Mass., on Nov. 5 about confidential C.I.A. financing for Prof. Nadav Safran, director of Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, incompletely reported remarks by two of his staff members, Barbro Ek and Dennis N. Skiotis. Both said they had known about C.I.A. support for a book Professor Safran was writing, but they also said in interviews that they opposed the financing and left the center before the C.I.A.'s role became public in October.

President Reagan increased the pressure on Republicans in the House of Representatives today to vote for a Democratic tax revision bill this week, and for the first time many legislators said they thought the measure would pass. In a letter to all members of the House, the President explicitly urged them to vote for the measure approved last week by the House Ways and Means Committee if an alternative Republican proposal should fail. ''A vote against final passage in the House would doom our efforts to achieve real tax reform for the American people,'' the President said. ''We must not allow that to happen.''

Stock prices pushed ahead again yesterday to record levels as investors cheered the prospects of lower energy costs, hoping they could have a positive effect on the nation's already improving economy. Trading was heavy. The Dow Jones industrial average, which again toyed with the 1,500 level, closed at an all-time high of 1,497.02 for a gain on the day of 19.84 points. The market's advance, while impressive, did not quite match the performance of last Wednesday, when the Dow rose 25.34 points.

One by one, four young girls glided onto the ice, twirling and cutting figure-eights to the sound of classical music, and moments later it was official -the third outdoor skating rink in Manhattan was open. The Rivergate Ice Rink, next to the 35-story Rivergate apartment complex at First Avenue and East 34th Street - the first outdoor rink opened to the public in Manhattan in nearly 20 years - was dedicated yesterday by officials from the city, which supervised its construction, and officials of the Rivergate Company, which built it. The rink had been recommended by representatives of Community Board 6, as an amenity in return for zoning concessions.

SINCE the 17th century, when Anton van Leeuwenhoek's microscope first discovered the teeming world of bacteria, protozoa and other microorganisms, every advance in the ability to see objects on smaller and smaller scales has led to fundamental increases in the understanding of living and physical processes. Today, scientists are testing and using new techniques that go far beyond those of conventional optical or electron microscopes, enabling them to see the most intimate structures of living and nonliving systems. In ways never before possible scientists can magnify and examine the surfaces, internal structures and even the atomic compositions of specimens, including living cells. The applications in medicine, electronics and other fields are virtually unbounded. While the original microscopes used light waves, these powerful new devices use a variety of technologies, including beams of sound waves, X-rays, polarized electrons or the nuclei of various atoms. The imaging often depends on advanced computers and other complex processing methods.