What was going on when I was born?

International Washington accused Libya of aiding the terrorists who carried out airport attacks in Rome and Vienna last Friday and said the United States was ready to work with other governments to ''exert pressure'' on the Qaddafi Government to halt its export of terrorism. The attacks killed 18 people, including 5 Americans, and wounded more than 110 people. [Page A1, Column 6.] Investigators believe the attacks in Rome and Vienna were planned in Beirut and partly coordinated in Switzerland. Officials in Rome believe the terrorists were recruited in Palestinian refugeee neighborhoods of Beirut, flown to Geneva, where they were given money and instructions, and then sent by train to Rome and Vienna. [A4:4-6.]

Michael Almond noticed a greater variety of wines showing up on store shelves in Charlotte, N.C. In Nashville, this year's United Way campaign was the city's most successful in history. At a new industrial park in Hibbing, Minn., 80 Americans will soon be manufacturing chopsticks by the hundreds of millions. And here in Murfreesboro, Esther Seeman, a professor of political science, has found that Japanese-style meticulousness is contagious. Those are all small signs of the growing social and cultural effects of foreign investment in the United States. Billions of dollars from West Germany, Britain, Japan and other lands have poured into Tennessee and across the nation, creating jobs, filling the Federal Government's borrowing needs, skirting protectionist trade barriers and reviving some industrial areas.

The Reagan Administration accused Libya today of aiding terrorists who staged attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports and said it was prepared to work with other Governments to ''exert pressure'' on Libya to halt the export of terrorism. Eighteen people were killed, including five Americans, and more than 110 were wounded in the attacks at check-in counters of El Al Israel Airlines on Friday. The chief White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, said that although military options were always a possibility, he could not say whether they were under consideration. 'Number of Ways' to Respond ''There are a number of ways that the United States can take action to discourage terrorism,'' Mr. Speakes said. ''Certainly U.S. military options are always an option, as are many other areas, and we are always considering those options. As of the moment, we don't say.''

Three days before the attacks on airports in Rome and Vienna, airlines were warned that ''Libyan-backed terrorists'' were planning actions over the holidays. Airline and security officials said yesterday that the information had been made available by intelligence and police organizations in Europe. On the basis of the information, at least one Western European carrier alerted its offices against ''a wave of airplane hijackings and terrorist operations'' and specified Italy and Spain as areas in which the terrorists were expected to travel. The warnings said ''various European locations'' had been targeted.

Companies A judge refused to block Union Carbide's defensive moves against GAF. The decision not to grant an injunction was ''a real negative'' for GAF's $5 billion bid to take over Carbide, one trader said. Among the actions GAF had wanted to stop were the creation of new Carbide securities that restrict the sale of company operations and a Carbide plan that could give a friendly suitor access to excess pension funds. Judge Milton Pollack said that a hostile suitor is not entitled to have directors ''smooth his path to control.'' GAF said it would appeal the decision. [Page D1.] Boeing received orders totaling almost $2 billion from Japan Air Lines and United Parcel Service. The 20 cargo planes ordered by U.P.S. would provide an intermediate-size craft for its expanding air-express business. The U.P.S. order included an option for 15 more planes. The airline ordered six jets. [D1.]

Out of the hospital where he was treated for tuberculosis and severe psychiatric problems, Victor is back in Times Square, freebasing cocaine and threatening to kill himself at age 16. Nicole's baby is due any day now; Nicole is 15. From 16-year-old Wanda, enrolled in a residential drug treatment program upstate, comes a hopeful letter. ''If I lived through 42d Street, I can make it through this,'' she wrote. ''I love you, Trudee. I've been drug-free 25 days.'' Victor, Nicole and Wanda are three of Trudee Able-Peterson's hundreds of young clients. Their desperate problems and often tenuous successes fill her days as the project director of Streetwork. Streetwork was started nearly two years ago by the nonprofit organization Victim Services Agency in an attempt to help the young people in Times Square who are both the most troubled and the most difficult to reach.

Thirteen years after the first pilings were driven into the Hudson River to support the platform upon which it rests, one of the huge diesel engines at the North River Water Pollution Control Plant was revved up yesterday to begin treating much of the sewage the city dumps into the river each day. It was an event marked by red, white and blue bunting, a speech by Mayor Koch - ''We want to see the lox come back to the Hudson,'' he joked - and promises by city officials that the long-troubled project was and would remain ahead of schedule. The plant, which stretches over 30 acres along the Hudson from 137th Street to 145th Street, will treat sewage from Greenwich Village, midtown, the Upper West Side, Harlem and Washington Heights. Negotiations on Park Cost In August, work will begin on the park that will sit on the roof of the concrete plant. The park, which was supposed to cost $80 million, will be paid for by the state, which has budgeted only $50 million for it.

A 47-year-old Brooklyn man with a complaint about past surgery fatally shot a doctor at Kings County Hospital Center yesterday afternoon and walked away from the scene, the police said. He remained at large last evening. The shooting occurred just before 3:30 P.M. in the fourth-floor office of the victim, identified as Dr. Thomas W. Pollock, a 40-year-old general surgeon and director of surgical services at the hospital since 1983. He was shot once in the side, the police said, and died about an hour later on the operating table.

The patterns of social drinking in the New York metropolitan area are changing markedly, according to people who run the region's taverns, restaurants and liquor stores. They say their customers are buying and drinking fewer alcoholic beverages because of worries about crackdowns on drunken driving and other concerns, such as greater health awareness. In the region, as well as throughout the nation, they say, those who used to drink liquor are turning in increasing numbers to low-alcoholic or nonalcoholic beverages and to wine or beer. 'Very, Very Conservative' ''We're probably witnessing a phenomenon of the greatest self-imposed prohibition in the history of the country,'' said Fred Sampson, the president of the New York State Restaurant Association, which has 6,000 member restaurants statewide.

The Reagan Administration told a Federal court today that a key provision of a new budget-balancing law was unconstitutional. But despite that stand, the Justice Department asked the court to dismiss a suit challenging the law, saying the 12 members of Congress who filed it had no standing to do so. The Justice Department's primary argument was that the suit should be dismissed. The questions about the constitutionality of the law were raised as secondary arguments in the event the court allowed the suit to proceed.

Because of an editing error, an art review in the Critics' Choices column of The Guide on Dec. 22 misidentified the site of Augustus Saint-Gaudens's monument to General Sherman. It is in Manhattan, at Grand Army Plaza on Fifth Avenue at 59th Street.

The new year brings forth a variety of changes in the Federal income tax system, regardless of whether Congress overhauls tax policy. Some of the changes go into effect on Jan. 1, under timetables set by legislation enacted in 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1984. Personal income taxes will be cut as the tax system is adjusted for inflation. Social Security taxes will go up. The charitable deduction for taxpayers who do not itemize their deductions will be increased. Home energy conservation tax credits will expire and two fringe benefits will lose their tax-exempt status.