In his 1921 memoir, “The Ways of the Circus,” the lion tamer George Conklin tells of the time that his brother, Pete, following a traveling circus to sell lemonade, ran out of water for his concession stand.

With nary a spring or a well nearby, a desperate Pete sneaked into the dressing tent and stole a tub of rosy water, into which Fannie Jamieson, a bareback horse rider, had just wrung out her pink tights. Into his new, albeit dirty, supply, Pete stirred tartaric acid and lemon pieces, and he sold it as strawberry lemonade to great success. And so, in 1857, pink lemonade was born. Or was it?

Recipe: Pink Lemonade

A competing story credits Henry E. Allott with inventing pink lemonade: At 15, he ran away from home to sell concessions with another traveling circus. One day, according to Allott’s obituary in The New York Times, he accidentally dropped red cinnamon candies into his product but sold it anyway. Even then, it turned out, pink was a compelling marketing strategy.

If these rose-tinted tales feel spun to you, then you’re right on the money. “These are great stories, but I don’t think we should take them literally,” says Betsy Golden Kellem, a circus historian and a trustee of the Circus Historical Society.